Don't Smudge The Sensor When You Press 'Play'

mattyrobinson69 writes "According to The Register, 'The RIAA wants your fingerprints.' They've teamed up with VeriTouch, who say 'In practical terms, VeriTouch's breakthrough in anti-piracy technology means that no delivered content to a customer may be copied, shared or otherwise distributed because each file is uniquely locked by the customer's live fingerprint scan.'" No details, but the article talks about a locked-down "wireless media player" to prevent such passing around.

Comments

I Hate to think...

[Anonymous Coward]

how this will work with porn movies...

outrageous

[Anonymous Coward]

they just don't get it do they?

Locked down devices have no future. Witness Sony getting its but handed to it by apple, after years of walkmen, by making intentionally defective products

da' finga'

[GillBates0]

they'll have to make do with my middle finger. Hope that's okay.

Not the point

[cot]

The real question is what if they can individually mark the music you purchase, and hold you liable if that music shows up on the net?

Cash is going the way of the dodo. I imagine there will be some degree of outcry to this in general, but already almost everyone's using check cards, ATM cards, and what have you and the music industry just may decide to stop allowing the purchase of music with cash, effectively eliminating anonymous purchasing.

Copy protection is inherently breakable if you allow the person to play the music back. The same is not true for watermarking, and I wouldn't be surprised if they try to go this direction in the long run.

Fair Use

[manitoulinnerd]

Does lending music to a friend not constitute as fare use?

What about when you die, if you have a sizeable music library (such could be considered an asset) how will your family be given access to it?

They are wasting their time.

Re:Fair Use

[EvilSporkMan]

What about when you die, if you have a sizeable music library (such could be considered an asset) how will your family be given access to it?

Well, obviously you won't be needing those fingers anymore...

They've planned ahead

[T-Kir]

They really want your DNA in the long run... so be careful where you aim. :)

Here's a link that actually works

[xSquaredAdmin]

Linkie

Verification of Actual Fingerprint

[MrNonchalant]

Makes me wonder if the RIAA will have some way to verify that it's actually a fingerprint they're getting. Simplest circumvention method I can think of is to lock the file with a random ubiquitous object (i.e. paper clip) and then anyone can unlock it with the same object.

Re:It's been said before...

[noidentity]

If I can hear it, I can copy it.

Aha! That's the solution: make it impossible to hear! Boss will surely compensate me well for this...

No market for this, unless....

[orthogonal]

From the linked article: "iVue: a wireless media player that allows content producers to lock down media files with biometric security. This week Veritouch announced that it had demonstrated the device to the RIAA and MPAA.

"In practical terms, VeriTouch's breakthrough in anti-piracy technology means that no delivered content to a customer may be copied, shared or otherwise distributed because each file is uniquely locked by the customer's live fingerprint scan," claims the company."

Now just who is going to buy this, a player that you can't let your mom or girlfriend (ok, that's not a problem for Slashdotters) or colleague borrow, that you can't use if your hand's in a cast or even in a glove (nobody plays MP3s on cold days?)?

And worse: how do you purchase tunes? Presumably, you'll have to present your fingerprint on purchase so it can be matched to the fingerprint when played. So will the media player lock you into purchasing only from merchants that process your fingerprint? How will you play free music -- like the legal live band recording at archive.org?

Perhaps it will also play fingerprint unencumbered music, but then what's the point?Why go to the extra trouble to purchase from a fingerprinting vendor, which at least will probably require hooking the player to your PC, providing the fingerprint, transmitting the stored fingerprint from the media player through the PC using some proprietary mechanism like an Active-X control?

again, who will want to pay extra to deal with having to provide a fingerprint?

The answer: no one.

So will it be legally mandated, or are the big record companies planning to stop selling CDs and sell only encrypted, DRM'd music? It has to be one of the two, or else this product has no market.

Guess they never heard of Tsutomu Matsumoto...

[hethatishere]

The RIAA is very excited about their newly discovered way to stifle fair-use and beat down consumer rights.

They seemed to have forgotten that two years ago Finger Print scanners were tricked by then a little known Japanese cyptogropher named Tsutomu Matsumoto. This pretty much stalled adoption of finger-print scanners indefinetely since supporters were unable to prove they could outsmart his meddling.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1991517.stm [BBC.UK]

I'm sure those who want to will find an even easier way of defeating it on a hardware/software level rather than resorting to copying finger-prints. But still you think the RIAA themselves would follow security news.

I can see the scene now.

[julesh]

You walk into the music shop.

You: I'd like to buy the latest... err.. Eminem single, please. Erm. As a present, you know. For my little brother.
Sales assistant: Certainly, if I can just take your fingerprint...
You: Fingerprint? I didn't know it was a crime to buy Eminem records. Yet. Although I'm sure somebody's working on it.
Sales assistant: No, no, it's just to stop other people from using it.
You: No, no, you don't understand. It isn't for me. It's a present.
Sales assistant: Sorry, we need a fingerprint.
You: He lives five hundred miles away.
Sales assistant: We can sell you a voucher? Or maybe you could get him to send his finger to you?

Alternative scenes

[cgenman]

Scene 1:

Roommate: Hey, the CD's over and the party's dying. Get up off the floor and put another one on.
You: Ngguh.
Roommate: You've got to. It's your fault for getting smashed by 11.
You: Nnnnuuuuuuuh.
Roommate: Dude, that cute girl in red has been giving me looks all night. You have to keep the party going.
You: Nnnnuh. Nuhhhhhhhh.
Roommate: Allright, we'll do this the hard way. Give me your hand. Guh! Damn you're heavy. Guh! Ok, over to the stereo! And no grunting in protest.

Roommate: Phew. I knew we should have just played MP3's.

Scene 2:

Employee: Welcome to Walmart! How can I help you?
Customer: I'd like to buy a copy of "Vespertine" by Bjork.
Employee: Ok. I need your fingerprint and 3 forms of ID. There will be a 4 day waiting period while we burn an individualized copy.
Customer: What?
Employee: We do all of this for your convienience.
Customer: That doesn't make any sense.
Employee: See, right here on the label of the sample box. It says "For your convienience, this recording is individually traced."
Customer: ...How much is that shotgun?
Employee: Fourty-nine ninty five, with your super-saver card.
Customer: Deal. [turns gun on Employee] Now give me that CD.
Employee: Sure thing.

Scene 3:

[Scene 3 has been lost. The woman delivering scene 3 to the studios struck a telephone pole while trying to get approved by her biometric car stereo. But on the bright side, none of the medics stole any of her CDs.]

Very Insightful

[Pan T. Hose]

It's been said before... and I'll say it again: If I can hear it, I can copy it.

This is very insightful. Very insightful indeed. Do I have to remind the 1769 history of 13 years old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) and the Miserere by Gregorio Allegri in Sistine Chapel? I don't think so. I believe everyone here remembers how this one of the unquestionably most significant and influential composers in history, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, was the first person who has literally circumvented the copy-protection of Sistine Chapel with nothing more but bare ears and his pure genius. Please let me quote Wikipedia:

Among the musical compositions of Allegri were two volumes of concerti, published in 1618 and 1619; two volumes of motets, published in 1620 and 1621; besides a number of works still in manuscript. He was one of the earliest composers for stringed instruments, and Athanasius Kircher has given one specimen of this class of his works in the Musurgia. But the most celebrated composition of Allegri is the Miserere, still annually performed in the Sistine Chapel at Rome. It is written for two choirs, the one of five and the other of four voices, and has obtained a celebrity which, if not entirely factitious, is certainly not due to its intrinsic merits alone.

The mystery in which the composition was long shrouded, no single copy being allowed to reach the public, the place and circumstances of the performance, and the added embellishments of the singers, account to a great degree for much of the impressive effect of which all who have heard the music speak. This view is confirmed by the fact that, when the music was performed at Venice by permission of the pope, it produced so little effect that the emperor Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor., at whose request the manuscript had been sent, thought that something else had been substituted. In spite of the precautions of the popes, the Miserere has long been public property.

In 1769 Mozart heard it and wrote it down, and in 1771 a copy was procured and published in England by Dr Burney. The entire music performed at Rome in Holy Week, Allegri's Miserere included, has been issued at Leipzig by Breitkopf and Härtel. Interesting accounts of the impression produced by the performance at Rome may be found in the first volume of Felix Mendelssohn's letters and in Miss Taylor's Letters from Italy.

It is worth repeating: If I can hear it, I can copy it. Amen. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart himself has proved it in the age of 13. Could we really need any better proof? Could there even be any better proof? Please keep in mind that there is more complexity and beauty in every minute of Allegri's Miserere than in the whole content produced by RIAA in any year. Let us not forget this very important fact.