Thomson's Vision: Smart Cards For Everything

ideaspin writes: "Thomson Multimedia is pushing the adoption of its smart card technology (SmartRight) in all kinds of devices ranging from TVs to PCs and set-top boxes -- basically, anything that might play digital media. Information Week has an article about it as does Webnoize(subscription only). This doesn't smell like something that would survive on the PC and consumers aren't going to be thrilled about the restrictions that such technology will bring -- no recording, limited archivability, no sharing and additional hardware for every viewing device. Interesting thing is that they are trying to convince the government to require the computer industry to adopt such a standard. Along with the copy protection schemes built into portable media and hard drives, this is one of the many ways that they are trying to lock down 'rogue' PC devices."

Comments

a solution in search of a problem

[nobody/incognito]

thomson is one of a handful of smartcard vendors, all of whom are beyond hope of a clue. they have been searching for a problem solved by smartcards for 20 years or more.

the electronic wallet has been their obsession but consumers everywhere hate the idea. (i see american express announced just this week that they are giving up on the electronic wallet for their blue card.) the gsm sim, which emerged in the last five years out of nowhere to become the largest smartcard application, completely took them by surprise.

so don't count on thompson or their cohort for much beyond a damn fine press release. they run this sort of thing up the flagpole regularly just to see who will salute.

nobody

I really can't see this working

[Dr_Cheeks]

Thomson are just one of several manufacturers - I don't care how many units they've slod - it's just a drop in the ocean. So they sell stuff with content protection and hype it big-time. Other companies jump on the bandwagon with similar but non-compatible schemes cos they're bigger than Thomson and don't want to pay to licence their tech. A standards committee is set up, who might come up with something in 5 years that no-one pays attention to.

Some people buy it. That's right, some people will give up their rights if a snazzy advert tells them to.

Other people go - what, so I've got to replace all the TVs, VCRs, DVD players and PCs in my house with ones that conform to this one format (and since there's several competing ones it's difficult to pick which one to go with), and I have to pay extra for the privalige. Hmm, no, I don't think that sounds like a reasonable deal.

Mean time, there'll be a small manufacturer or two, who can't afford to produce something like this, and go on producing un-restricted platforms. Which everyone starts to buy.

Joe Public may not care too much about violations of his rights, but he doesn't want to have people try to restrict how he watches TV. You can supress minorities (Linux users & DeCSS), but if you try to stop everyone you're going to have a lot of problems. Will Joe Public vote again for his seanator if his seanator restricts his cable? Nope. So government are going to be reluctant to pass this too. Nice try Thomson.

Another Microsoft?

[Self Bias Resistor]

I think that Thomson can't and should not succeed for a number of different reasons.

1. I don't want to see a hardware "Microsoft" running all of our TV's, set-top boxes, DVRs and HDTV sets because it would give Thomson an immeasurable amount of leverage in regards to pricing. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but if the company is hell bent on having their hardwaree in all these devices, and they're trying to get the government to mandate it (a highly unlikely outcome), then they'll gain a huge amount of market control. If their devices are in a large enough proportion of what people buy, then companies are going to need to use Thomson's stuff, and pay their prices. Similar thing with Windows, funnily enough.

2. No copyright protection schemes, even those embedded in hardware, are crackproof. PSX/PS One "mod" chips used to play pirate copies of PS games and DeCSS (even though it's software it still counts) are telling examples of the industry's failed attempts at hardware-level copyright control. Even if the hardware cracks do not become ubiquitous (their very illegality prevents such a possibility), people will merely figure out ways around them, and we may end up with a TV/video Napster (assuming that such a technology is possible to apply with receiving devices - DVRs maybe).

3. The uptake of Thomson's products relies on a marked increase in the purchasing of DVRs, HDTV sets and set-top boxes. This is not the case because such devices for the moment are too expensive for Mr Joe Average to consider replacing his old TV/VCR. The uptake of technologies even in techno-crazed countries such as Australia (who has one of the highest rates of mobile/cell phone ownership in the world) is still going to take a while. There needs to be a huge drop in price, which just isn't going to happen because the devices are complicated and expensive to make and the content just isn't there to make it worthwhile. So there's not much point in worrying about the effects of such a development because for the moment it will remain a plan to implement changes to what are currently considered niche, rich-bastard devices.

4. Even Thomson themselves (via their government affairs representative) admit that these devices won't completely solve the problem. They say that "the SmartRight technology is "not a panacea" for securely distributing digital video, but he scoffs at the notion that consumers won't buy devices dependent on smart cards." Now correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that quite a lot of consumers would not like to buy a device that is; a) not completely necessary (since the revenue in TV is advertising and not actual content) and b) obsolete in a few years.

Therefore, the chances of Thomson achieving their goal is quite remote considering the number of obstacles in their way and the considering that the hardware makers have historically been very resistant in implementing these changes from Day One. There are just too many obstacles in the way for them to succeed.

Self Bias Resistor
"When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is no longer our friend." - Murphy's Laws Of Combat