RFID Tags for Digital Rights Management

mathemaniac writes "RFID Journal is running a story about a group of researchers at UCLA working on a new RFID application that would provide consumers a means of watching DVDs of movies as soon as they hit the theaters. It could also be used to address one of Hollywood's biggest concerns: piracy of digital content. The group is researching a method of using RFID as a tool for digital rights management (DRM), wherein technologies are employed to protect media files from unauthorized use."

Comments

Pr0n example

[fembots]

I'm surprised that movie industry is not following up how pr0n industry can be so successful and profitable.

Being sophisticated and innovative in member management is one thing, but more importantly is the undeniable fact that pr0n industry actually produces something that viewers want to watch, maybe that is why people are paying to watch it. Pr0n is probably one of the most pirated product known to mankind, yet it's still a feasible business living through printed to digital materials.

There's a story about movie slump, the article mentioned that the industry needs something that can get people excited about going to the movies.

Re:Pr0n example

[Omega1045]

I'm surprised that movie industry is not following up how pr0n industry can be so successful and profitable.

The pr0n industry is successful because guys like tits.

Re:Pr0n example

[Chris Kamel]

pr0n is probably still profitable because of the ridiculous profit margins involved.

You could pay $20 for a pr0n DVD whose production cost something in the order of thousands of dollars.

Compare that to a multi-million dollar budget needed for a top (non-pr0n) movie and you've got a pretty different deal there.

Re:Pr0n example

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised that movie industry is not following up how pr0n industry can be so successful and profitable.

You mean like reducing actors' pay to $500 and filming the movies at the director's house in a single day? Look at the budget for major motion pictures and then look at the budget for a porn movie, then compare the final selling price for each and the ways they are distributed. Is it clearer now why making skin flicks can be so profitable?

Re:Pr0n example

[Deanasc]

Why should I go to a movie theator if it's just a giant screen TV set? I'll wait for it to hit HBO or rent the DVD and get the same experience with my 10 foot screen and PowerPoint projector. I remember when movies were a lush fusion of colors on the screen and not a bunch of pixels you can count by the foot. That's really what's behind the movie slump. The TV set really did kill off the theator chain.

Re:Pr0n example

[SYFer]

This is an excellent point, actually. There is much to learn from the porn industry and its amazing resilience. Hollywood has long played the game of deciding what people want to watch (and sometimes they do get it right) and then carefully policing people's access to it.

In my mind this is analogous to the old "security through obfuscation" argument in that when you try to defy the inevitable and control the situation through brute force of regulation and procedure, you you actually lose control--you literally challenge people to defy you. Look at the old Incompatible Time Sharing System and the brilliant way that the authors eliminated some hackers' desire to crash the system by essentially adding a "crash system now" command. Take away the artificial supports and content stands completely on its own merits. Porn is out there with everything going against it but, since the producers are so adept at delivering what people want, they can still make it work. George Lucas got on the program because he realized that if you truly deliver the goods, people will reward you and the desire to rip you off is lessened.

Re:Pr0n example

[Adult film producer]

You mean like reducing actors' pay to $500 and filming the movies at the director's house in a single day?

Actually we have real studios with lots of neat props and sometimes they take 2 or 3 days :)

Re:Pr0n example

[Tenebrious1]

I'm surprised that movie industry is not following up how pr0n industry can be so successful and profitable.

The porn industry is a completey different beast. It is profitable because they don't pay their actors millions of dollars for each film, especially when they make a dozen "films" a week. They don't pay millions to the producer. They don't pay tens of thousands for a script, and don't worry if they use the same script over and over again. They don't pay millions on advertising blitzes before the release. They don't pay millions to build sets, but reuse sets over and over and over and over again.

The only reason the porn industry is "profitable" is because they don't have anything like the budget requirements for a large box office movie. Porn manages to survive rampant copying only because it's so cheap to produce, the only need a few thousand people to buy the product to make it profitable.

Because the difference in the number of movies made, the budgets for each movie, and the number of copies that need to be viewed/sold to make a profit, there's no way the film industry can model itself after the porn industry.

Re:Pr0n example

[nietsch]

73% gave up on 1st day in iCLOD city. Can you survive there?

Most likely they figured out it is really not a nice game. Tried it, could not figure out what to do, dumped it.

I would not be boasting about 73% not liking your game, but that is just me...

Re:Pr0n example

[SYFer]

Well then maybe they've evolved a model that is not sustainable given the realities of the world. Perhaps they need to deflate the budgets a bit and focus on making good content. I remember watching them film "The Hulk" in my neighborhood and, as someone who exists on the low-budget fringes of the film world, I was astonished at some of the insane largesse. For the scenes on Telegraph Hill where the military stormed the poor Hulkster, they actually placed additional potted plants up on the Vallejo street steps (at no doubt great expense), but I could never even spot them in the final product. And, IIRC, the movie got a lukewarm response. They had a bunch of extras up on my roof as soldiers and I never saw them either. Those extras worked all day walking up and down the hill for each take. Insane. I'm not saying all films need to be low-budget guerilla crap, but Hollywood has gone so far over the line that they've built an unrealistic machine that simply can't be sustained.

Re:Pr0n example

[anthony_dipierro]

Because the difference in the number of movies made, the budgets for each movie, and the number of copies that need to be viewed/sold to make a profit, there's no way the film industry can model itself after the porn industry.

Sure they could. They could make more movies, have smaller budgets, and release on cheap media like DVD.

Netflix has 3 million subscribers. HBO has 30 million. People are willing to pay for movies, just not the $10 or whatever theatres are charging these days (I wouldn't know, I have Netflix).

Re:Pr0n example

[anthony_dipierro]

You mean like reducing actors' pay to $500 and filming the movies at the director's house in a single day?

Surely there's a happy medium. Armagedden cost $140 million to make. Pi cost $68,000. Sure, Armageddon grossed 62 times as much, but it cost 2000 times as much to make.

With digital photography, the costs to make a movie are going down dramatically. The top actors might not be willing to take a pay cut, but there are plenty of excellent actors that would work for less than $10 million.

Re:Pr0n example

[suitepotato]

Because the difference in the number of movies made, the budgets for each movie, and the number of copies that need to be viewed/sold to make a profit, there's no way the film industry can model itself after the porn industry.

Of course they could. Is Ron Jeremy doing Heather Hunter really any different from Bill Bob Thorton slamming Halle Berry? Only if you note the fact that you don't see the goods with the latter unless you freeze frame the latter's performance in Monsters' Ball.

All we need it higher quality porn or lower quality mainstream. They don't have to have gynecological closeups. I'm sure about as much as Playboy shows after midnight of Kirsten Dunst would satisfy us. I'll forgo high end SFX if I get to see Lucy Liu spread-eagle in the buff on the hood of a Trans Am with her fellow Charlie's Angels stars.

Re:Pr0n example

[dickrichardv8]

I am not convinced that the bugets for films are based on how efficent they want to be. The accounting can be skewed for different reasons. An actors contract based on profit can make profits undesirable as can the good ole' IRS. Make sure the extra's wardrobe includes a fur coat the same size as your wife's size and make the coat an expense and not a wardrobe department investment. Order real pizzas for props at snack time etc. Other businesses don't do that do they? The local Self Help business in my town is non profit but the president's salary (founder also) is a little too nice.

Re:Pr0n example

[anthony_dipierro]

Make sure the extra's wardrobe includes a fur coat the same size as your wife's size and make the coat an expense and not a wardrobe department investment.

Well, yeah, if you want to commit tax evasion you can get away with paying taxes. But if not, then you have to pay taxes on that fur coat just like any other non-monetary compensation.

Order real pizzas for props at snack time etc.

Sure, that'd fall under a non-taxable fringe benefit. But it's not going to add up to that much money.

Other businesses don't do that do they?

Bagels, coffee, the occassional pizza party. These are common in lots of businesses, and they're usually non-taxable fringe benefits.

The local Self Help business in my town is non profit but the president's salary (founder also) is a little too nice.

The President of a non-profit still pays taxes on his salary.

Re:Pr0n example

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously, they should just add more T & A in the movies.

Re:Pr0n example

[ErikTheRed]

Being sophisticated and innovative in member management is one thing, but more importantly is the undeniable fact that pr0n industry actually produces something that viewers want to watch, maybe that is why people are paying to watch it.

Did you have to discuss 'member management' and 'pr0n' in the same sentence? I get the visual of some PHB using an OpenOffice spreadsheet to keep track of... ouch.

Re:Pr0n example

[bit01]

Compare that to a multi-million dollar budget needed for a top (non-pr0n) movie and you've got a pretty different deal there.

Maybe that says more about the efficiency of the non-pr0n movie industry than anything else.

I find it strange that Hollywood needs big budgets to put colored dots on a screen. Some of my favourite movies cost next to nothing to make. e.g. Aardman animation's The Wrong Trousers was basically a one man operation, every bit as entertaining as the big budget movies and better than the later Chicken Run from the same company but with a much bigger budget.

Hollywood needs some price discipline, they have excess money basically because of broken IP law. They're using that big money as much for market manipulation as for producing quality product.

---

90% of modern marketing is nothing more than an arms race and so purely parasitic.

Re:Pr0n example

[Queer Boy]

You could pay $20 for a pr0n DVD whose production cost something in the order of thousands of dollars.

Clearly you've never bought pr0n. Try $60 average for a DVD.

Re:Pr0n example

[Queer Boy]

I'll wait for it to hit HBO or rent the DVD and get the same experience with my 10 foot screen and PowerPoint projector.

Don't forget that the popcorn costs 50 cents for a tub and the soda is a dollar for 2 litres.

Re:Pr0n example

[vandil]

I would love to get that kind of size with any quality from my projector. What kind did you get? And I guess more importantly, how much did it set you back?

Re:Pr0n example

[Anonymous Coward]

The pr0n industry is successful because guys like tits

No. The pr0n industry is successful, because men like vaginas (altough they not like them when they are called vaginas).

If men were satisfied with tits alone, Baywatch would be the most successful tv series of all times.

Oh, wait...

Re:Pr0n example

[Chris Kamel]

you're right I've never bought it, but I saw the prices online :D $60 for a DVD is daylight robbery

Re:Pr0n example

[Weezul]

The pr0n industry is successful because guys like tits.

Funny, the last time I saw a major motion picture, it was also because of the actrice's tits.

Re:Pr0n example

[AnalogDiehard]

That's really what's behind the movie slump. The TV set really did kill off the theator chain.

Watching a movie/DVD at home means you don't have to deal with unruly hecklers, idiots chatting on cell phones, highway robbery snack prices, or pre-show ads with boo-hoo sob-sob testimonies of set workers losing their jobs to file sharing.

Annoyances aside, I got tired of blowing nine bucks per head on poor quality content. More movies these days are just utter crap.

That is why I stopped going to theaters. The TV didn't kill it off, the theater/movie industry did it themselves.

Re:Pr0n example

[Hymer]

Hmmm... Several girls I know like tits too...

Re:Pr0n example

[Deanasc]

Yes movies did price themselves out of the marketplace now that the DVD costs less then two tickets and includes extra scenes or a directors cut that the major chains couldn't or didn't want to show.

Re:Pr0n example

[Deanasc]

I actually get pretty crappy quality from my projector. It was discarded at work due to a massive dead spot in the middle of the red channel. I turned up the hue on all the colors as much as I could to wash it out. My screen is currently a couple pieces of white foam board taped together and clamped up on the front of an old TV stand. So it's not quite the theator experience I'd like. On the otherhand I do remember vividly what the difference between projected film and the new digital prints look like. I just feel cheated if I can see the individual pixels and I usually can at the theator.

I plan on upgrading to the best quality projector and screen money can buy. I'm just waiting for the bulb in this one to go. No sense in letting $400 go to waste sitting in a garbage dump. (I'm the kind of guy who drives a beater to it's last day then buys a new car as a reward for getting every last mile out of the previous car.)

I want to buy another player... why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see what's in this for the consumer. More DRM, less fair use? Great, sign me up.

Re:I want to buy another player... why?

[/ASCII]

It's DivX all over again!

Re:I want to buy another player... why?

[Seraphim1982]

It's DivX all over again!

DIVX =/= DivX
You're artile went throught the trouble of making the distinction.
DivX = video codec
DIVX = psudo-rental video disk

Re:I want to buy another player... why?

[/ASCII]

Yeah, but that's a bit of a retcon. If you follow the links, you'll notice that the disk format is referred to as DIVX, Divx and various other spellings. The original name of the codec was 'DivX ;-)', as a pun on the defunct disk format.

Re:I want to buy another player... why?

[russotto]

Bingo. It's just another scheme to allow the sellers control of that which they have already sold. I'm not sure what RFID adds, except a veneer of extra evil.

Re:I want to buy another player... why?

[plover]

The "promise" is that you get to watch the movie the day it hits the theater. So on June 20th, you head over to Target and plunk down your $24.99 for your "advance copy" of "The Silmarillion" (starring Tom Hanks as Sauron), but you can't watch it until June 30th (or whatever.) If you pop the RF-DVD in the player, you'll get a commercial or twenty, the theatrical trailer, and probably a pre-release demo of "Shelob, the video game".

No waiting in lines at the theatre, you can just hit "play" at 12:01 AM if you want to watch it as soon as you can.

Great, sign me up too. I can't wait for DRM to make my life better.

(Please note that the previous poster failed to close his <sarcasm> tag, so my post gets it for free!)

Re:I want to buy another player... why?

[FLEB]

Another buzzword acronym, too.

Re:I want to buy another player... why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just have one question about all of this DRM stuff:

Can it help me to only pay for content once?

Can it record the fact that I have watched commercials so many times while watching a flick that my part of social contract is more than filled?

Can it record the fact that I payed for the DVD, and am paying again with the comercials when it comes on TV, and so count that towards something new?

We hear the content industry go on and on about consumers violating there end of the social contract, and waive DRM as an answer to that. And to a point, I agree, the old social contract is broken. But can this solution do anything to help the CONSUMER manage THEIR rights? If not, its in no way a solution to this problem, as it does not take the whole issue into account.

Re:I want to buy another player... why?

[Pofy]

>but you can't watch it until June 30th

And the point of selling something but setting a "can't be used until later date" is? I really never understood it. Since all those getting it are the ones who won't see it at the theatre (hence why they bought the DVD), I really can't see a point. Just typical market control which is of no benefit to the customer. If they don't like people watching it, don't sell it.

Re:I want to buy another player... why?

[RovingSlug]

Just because technology can enable something doesn't mean it should be allowed to enable something. This is the single biggest misunderstanding of computational technology as our society acclimates to its pervasiveness. Technology should not be used to arbitrarily create new laws.

RFID is evil.

[Anonymous Coward]

DRM is evil.
Movie companies are evil.
It seems UCLA is evil, too.

Re:RFID is evil.

[imnojezus]

It seems UCLA is evil, too.

Any USC student/alum could have told you that LONG ago.

LOL, they have no clue

[CrazyJim1]

They shouldn't spend more than 5$ on copy protection, as thats what it costs to rent a movie at blockbuster, and create infinate copies.

If they really cared, they could slap together an encryption technique in an hour, and have an internet delivery system so you could watch movies on your computer. It doesn't matter that the encryption system is crappy, it'd take longer to break than it would to simply pirate the movie in conventional ways. And if the crack becomes widespread, spend 1 more hour and change the system around.

So in conclusion, they could create a content delivery system and boost their revenue on movies with code from a system that could take a good programmer less than a month to develop.

Re:LOL, they have no clue

[Chris Kamel]

slap together an encryption technique in an hour
and have it broken in half an hour, Sony developed a technique that was broken with a marker pen. And I think that took them much more than an hour to "slap together"

Re:LOL, they have no clue

[toad3k]

How much you wanna bet the system would require some proprietary software to use. When I can play that stuff with mplayer, then maybe I'll drop blockbuster.

Re:LOL, they have no clue

[timeOday]

Again, the point is not whether it can be broken by people who are willing to look into it and carry it out. Why? Because people who want to can already download it via p2p anyways. Look at the music industry, which is finally being dragged kicking and screaming into distributing music online. All their concerns about distributing files that could be cracked have been irrelevant the whole time, since anybody could go to Wal-Mart and buy a completely unprotected CD, and make unlimited copies if that's what they wanted to do.

This has some possibilities...

[ErikTheRed]

Hopefully, they'll use 40-bit encryption and rely on a proprietary algorithm as the principal means of ...

What do you mean it's already been done?

Oh well, back to the drawing board.

Re:This has some possibilities...

[Anonymous Coward]

I propose a two-pass rot13

Re:This has some possibilities...

[Alsee]

40-bit encryption

Oh, they've learned a lot about encryption since that fiasco. For example now they know that good encryption has to be based on prime numbers. So now they're going with 39-bit encryption.

-

Muh burd

[Anonymous Coward]

http://flickr.com/photos/34815775@N00/sets/336981/

i guess that was obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

well you knew it was comming

Next up traffic lights respond faster to the elite

You gotta be kidding me

[Lifewish]

RFID and DRM? Are they trying to send every geek on the planet apopleptic or something?

Re:You gotta be kidding me

[mabhatter654]

Actually, the idea is a good one.. the thing all DRM needs is "uniqueness" which is exactly what digital technology strips away. In the era of records there was a "barrier to entry" simply because equipment to make records was so expensive there was no "non-commercial" middle ground.

The idea of an RFID tag makes perfect sense. With the new and shiny DMCA, it could be illegal to produce copies of the RFID tags. You could put the key on the RFID tag and manufacture some "proprietary" format with the embedded tag... they players would be required to "read" the tag to decrypt the data.

Of course this means that PC users may not be able to use the discs... But that's another story about marketing. One of the problems with publishing technology is that they have to trade off cheap with reproduceable... They've gotta come up with "gimmicks" Nintendo GCs "backwards" drive was perfect... I'd put RFID tags in the same category.

Ultimately, they have to build a better multimedia center that allows "piping" of content between formats without actually copying it. I've wondered for years why component makers have shuned the idea of "remote PC control" versus making a PC "player". Apple's Airport Express is a great "convergence" device in this respect..allowing you to remote control your itunes list, but pipe it anywhere in your house...we need more of that! Things like USB or firewire remote control would allow really simple media setups without having to hack anything... after all, you can get a cheap DVD player for your TV for about the same as a DVD-rom drive. Why can't you "pipe" that easily to your PC... that's the question to really ask, because then formats become irrelevant.

Re:You gotta be kidding me

[andy jenkins]

RFID and DRM?

The missing pieces for my sock drawer! I'm going to RFID my socks into pairs so I can track them, then DRM them out of compatibility with my flatmate's feet.

Sorted, now to work on biological DRM for my milk

Re:You gotta be kidding me

[shutdown -p now]

Sounds like a schema to get rid of piracy to me:

1. Release a DRM scheme based on RFID
2. Announce it on /.
3. All geeks (including those pirating movies) suffer heart attack and die
4. Profit!

Re:You gotta be kidding me

[ch-chuck]

Toss in 'backed by Microsoft' for the /. evil trinity bonus outrage points.

Re:You gotta be kidding me

[Glendale2x]

3. All geeks (including those pirating movies) suffer heart attack and die

And all this time I've been wondering what the missing step was!

Re:You gotta be kidding me

[Queer Boy]

Nintendo GCs "backwards" drive was perfect...

Yes, it was perfect, but because there was only one hardware vendor (if you ignore the rare Q) and because it is a single purpose device. DVD players are multi-funtional. In a home theatre system it is unlikely to see a DVD player and CD player separate anymore. WHy double up on the functionality?

The great thing about DVD was that it is a digital versatile disc. There's no going back once you create something like that. DIVX proved it.

I still don't understand why the 48khz, 2 hours long 5.1 surround portion of DVD audio was not the successor to the CD, but that's another story.

Re:You gotta be kidding me

[Anonymous Coward]

You've missed the crucial step:

4: Charge their families and relatives for burial services
5: Profit !

Re:You gotta be kidding me

[mabhatter654]

DVD audio never took off because people don't really care that much about quality in the internet world... after all, how many people rip DVDs down to CD size just to copy them? And apple has a whole business around selling low-quality music online.

Frankly, the music companies put so many restirctions on it that the early adopters [i.e. pc people] were cut right out of it without extreme DRM.

Frankly, I'm shocked they haven't decided to break compatibility... harware is So cheap nodays that building a "compatible" device with an extra DVD/CD drive would be far more benificial to them than trying to keep the players infinitely backward compatible... I had one of those nifty play-everything drives... and I used it for anything but DVDs about 5 times in 3 years. Everybody's got DVD players that will ever get one by now... It'd be trivial to build a "changer" player with two seperate disc mechanisms and consumers would never know the difference!

Networking required

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

At first this looks like DECSS all over again but with the key on an RFID tag. The difference is that in the UCLA proposal the player has to phone home to verify the RFID tag.

This technology could conceivably be used for good. Imagine a player with a hard disk as well as a network card. It could auto-download interviews, making-of documentaries and so on as they get released after the DVD ships.

Of course this is the end of privacy. The RFID tag has to be unique to each copy of the disk, otherwise you could copy it wholesale. When the player phones home with the RFID info, they know who bought the disk and maybe even how often it gets played. Ick.

Re:Networking required

[lee1026]

of course it wouldn't actually work - you can't ever find out if we are talking about blockbuster or some idiot pirating a movie. and of course we could always just play the movie and save the stuff on the screen to a DVD and then copy that DVD. in short, no way in hell this is going to work.

Re:Networking required

[anthony_dipierro]

At first this looks like DECSS all over again but with the key on an RFID tag.

DeCSS could have worked years ago, when writable DVDs were expensive. But now that I can get a dual layer writable DVD for 3 or 4 bucks, it's too easy to just bit copy the whole damn thing.

RFID tags are even cheaper, more like 30 or 40 cents. The writers themselves are expensive, but if this plan actually goes into action I bet you'll see the price of RFID writers come down real quick, which, hey, at least there'll be good to come out of it.

This technology could conceivably be used for good. Imagine a player with a hard disk as well as a network card. It could auto-download interviews, making-of documentaries and so on as they get released after the DVD ships.

You don't need RFID technology to do that. And without tamper-proof hardware, which is allegedly physically impossible, you're not going to stop piracy, because it only takes one person to break into the device and reverse engineer it.

Of course this is the end of privacy. The RFID tag has to be unique to each copy of the disk, otherwise you could copy it wholesale.

I seriously doubt the RIAA is going to be able to outlaw paying for DVDs with cash.

When the player phones home with the RFID info, they know who bought the disk and maybe even how often it gets played.

I also doubt they're going to force DVD manufacturers to build players that "phone home".

Re:Networking required

[nachoboy]

DeCSS could have worked years ago, when writable DVDs were expensive. But now that I can get a dual layer writable DVD for 3 or 4 bucks, it's too easy to just bit copy the whole damn thing.

I'm not sure you understand how DeCSS (or, more appropriately, CSS) works. The contents of the DVD are encrypted, so "just bit copy[ing] the whole damn thing" doesn't help you at all. You still need to be able to decrypt the content to view it. The decryption key for pressed DVD's is stored in the innermost track of the disc. This area is readable by DVD players and DVD-ROM drives, but DVD-RW drives cannot write to this track. Thus, if you copied the "entire" disc, you would have only actually copied the encrypted video but not decryption key, making the disc rather useless to you. This is the reason programs like DVDDecrypter are so popular.

Re:Networking required

[cait56]

Networking Required is exactly the weakness here, as it was with the original DIVX. The RFID is not really a real improvement over the original scheme of "marking" the DVD with some flaws out of the normal reading range.

I see nothing inherently wrong with DRM schemes, but they need to learn from iTunes. The market has shown that a reasonable DRM that does not interfere with how honest people will want to use the content they are buying, will not meet with market resistance.

One of the legitimate things I want to do with a DVD that I bought legimitately is watch it on my laptop while I'm on the road. I don't particularly care to pay the hotel $11.95 so I can have wireless so i can watch a movie that I own.

And that's just one example of a legitimate use that is incompatible with network access. Not providing a complete profile of which movies I am watching when in perpetuity is another.

Re:Networking required

[anthony_dipierro]

I'm not sure you understand how DeCSS (or, more appropriately, CSS) works. The contents of the DVD are encrypted, so "just bit copy[ing] the whole damn thing" doesn't help you at all. You still need to be able to decrypt the content to view it.

Umm, you can use any DVD player to view it.

The decryption key for pressed DVD's is stored in the innermost track of the disc.

Sure, and those keys themselves (the disk keys) are encrypted using the player keys which are hard coded into the DVD players.

This area is readable by DVD players and DVD-ROM drives, but DVD-RW drives cannot write to this track. Thus, if you copied the "entire" disc, you would have only actually copied the encrypted video but not decryption key, making the disc rather useless to you.

It was my understand that these areas were accessible by some DVD+RW drives.

This is the reason programs like DVDDecrypter are so popular.

Actually, the bigger reason they are popular is that once you have the decrypted data you can play it in any MPEG player and/or compress it and burn it to a cheap single layer DVD.

Anyway, if it really is so hard to just bit copy the whole DVD disc, then wouldn't a new version of CSS which isn't so easily cracked work pretty damn well? As long as you only allow hardware players it's going to be extremely difficult and expensive to figure out the player keys.

Re:Networking required

[Anonymous Coward]

There will be no end to piracy. The problem is that the data has to be unencrypted and in the clear on the last jump to the TV. There will always be a way to capture the content when it is in an unprotected form. Make a new whathaveyou that is not protected by RFID, and there you go.

Alternately, the response from the central server could be spoofed. Without a centralized server, tricking it becomes even easier.

Better yet: What the hell happens if the system goes down? I can't watch DVDs if my line to their system goes out?

There are way too many hard problems left to get perfect copy protection.

Re:Networking required

[Anonymous Coward]

hasn't a restricted dvd format already been tried and failed?

http://hometheater.about.com/library/weekly/aa0621 99.htmcircuit city's divx

Re:Networking required

[Queer Boy]

This technology could conceivably be used for good. Imagine a player with a hard disk as well as a network card. It could auto-download interviews, making-of documentaries and so on as they get released after the DVD ships.

This sounds like a great plan but if you can sell the DVD without the extra function eventually why bother with the extra function? The extras on DVDs was a gimmick to get people to re-buy all their old movies. Now, because it's standard, people are hesitant to buy a DVD that doesn't have all that stuff.

Besides, your idea will never work because people do not want to "rent" the things they own. Consumers already voted on that with the war between DIVX and DVD (btw, did anyone ever crack the DIVX scheme? those disks are like free now).

Re:Networking required

[shmlco]

you can't ever find out if we are talking about blockbuster

You don't think they could track sales made to BLOCKBUSTER? Let's see...

Sold to Blockbuster, 500,000 copies of Fantastic Four, SN 123102001 to 123602000.

Heck, tracking shipments is what RFID is designed to do.

Re:Networking required

[Sancho]

So have you successfully copied a DVD without removing the CSS encryption and then played it back in a DVD player? It's pretty shocking that that worked.

The encryption sequence works as you said. There is a disc key which is used to encrypt the data on the disc. It can be just about anything the RIAA wants. the disc key is encrypted with a player key, which every player in the world must have. The encrypted key is stored on the disc in an area which is non-writeable. As such, if you tried to perform a bit-for-bit copy of the disc, you would not have the encrypted key. Without the encrypted key, the player key is useless--it won't be able decrypt any of the data on the disc.

This link supports my statement about the CSS area not being writeable:
http://www.proactionmedia.com/dvd_media_formats.ht m

The main differences, in addition to recording wavelength, are that DVD-R(G) uses decrementing pre-pit addresses, a pre-stamped (version 1.0) or pre-recorded (version 1.1) control area, CPRM, and allows double-sided discs.

and

There are three kinds of DVD-RW discs. All are 4.7G capacity. Version 1.0 discs, rarely found outside of Japan, have an embossed lead-in (to prevent copying of CSS information), which causes compatibility problems. Version 1.1 discs have a pre-recorded lead-in that improves compatibility.

Re:Networking required

[Sancho]

Forgot to address the new version of CSS bit...
Yes, a new version of CSS would make things harder. Increasing the key size would make brute forcing it prohibitively difficult. Then they just have to keep tight(er) control over their player keys. Remember, the original DeCSS was written because some software DVD player left its player keys in memory. Once the player key was read, it was a simple matter to write a program to read the encrypted content, decrypt the disc key, decrypt the data, and write out unencrypted content.

Of course, the main problem is backwards compatibility. Changing CSS would mean that new discs wouldn't work in old players. As complacent as we are, I don't think the public will stand for that without getting something in return. That something will be "improved" quality and larger disc sizes (read: blu-ray or HD-DVDs).

The fact is, unless a new format has no computer-readable equivalent (i.e. no blu-ray- or HD-DVD-ROMs) then the next DeCSS is a hacker away from being released. Even if the key isn't left plaintext in memory, it should be recoverable. The best way for the MPAA to secure their next format would be to require players that have to phone home to receive playback authority. The first few DDoS attacks on their servers should be more than enough to convince the public that this is a Bad Idea.

Re:Networking required

[nachoboy]

It was my understand (sic) that these areas were accessible by some DVD+RW drives.

Do you have any documentation of this? Any links or accounts of anyone ever actually having successfully done this? Can you provide a first-hand account?

The Optical Storage Technology Association has a great writeup on this (summary: the lead-in area isn't even writeable on consumer DVD media). I'd love to hear what information or any products you have that contradict what they've written.

Re:Networking required

[Alsee]

I also doubt they're going to force DVD manufacturers to build players that "phone home".

If they intend to deploy the system in the article then that that is exactly what they plan to do. From the article: In order to authenticate, the player would also need to link to some type of online network. A phone home to identify the player and to get an actual decryption key.

Of course whether they will actually try and whether they would succeed are both open questions.

-

Re:Networking required

[Alsee]

It could auto-download interviews, making-of documentaries and so on as they get released after the DVD ships.

Umm, in that case why don't the just sell a naked RFID? Chuckle.

-

Re:Networking required

[TheRaven64]

I also want to be able to watch movies on my laptop. With my last one, I could take a disk image and watch that, which used a lot less power than spinning the physical disk and so was more useful on the road. My new one includes hardware copy protection, which prevents me from doing this. DVDs already have too many restrictions, which prevent me from exercising my fair use rights. Adding any more would not make me more inclined to buy movies.

Re:Networking required

[anthony_dipierro]

So have you successfully copied a DVD without removing the CSS encryption and then played it back in a DVD player? It's pretty shocking that that worked.

No, I haven't.

The encrypted key is stored on the disc in an area which is non-writeable.

Like I said, I thought there were some DVD writers which allowed this. If not, then hey, I was wrong.

Your link covers DVD-R and DVD-RW, but doesn't say anything about DVD+RW, which is what I've heard is able to write to the CSS sector (at least on some writers).

Re:Networking required

[anthony_dipierro]

Of course, the main problem is backwards compatibility. Changing CSS would mean that new discs wouldn't work in old players.

Well, yeah, but this story is about a new type of DVD which wouldn't be backwards compatible.

The fact is, unless a new format has no computer-readable equivalent (i.e. no blu-ray- or HD-DVD-ROMs) then the next DeCSS is a hacker away from being released. Even if the key isn't left plaintext in memory, it should be recoverable.

Absolutely, you couldn't allow a software player, and even then you'd probably eventually lose a lot of the keys. And even then, it wouldn't really matter as even if the current writers can't write to the CSS sector, you can be sure that new writers would be made that could (and I doubt the government would be able to stop that, there are just too many legal uses for writing to hidden sectors on DVDs).

The best way for the MPAA to secure their next format would be to require players that have to phone home to receive playback authority.

To be effective, they'd have to combine it with watermarking and direct sales (no buying from a distributor with cash). Then I suppose they'd get most people to pay. There would still be some who'd have their hacked DVD player sitting next to their hacked satellite receiver, but that's relatively rare.

And none of this is really in immediate need. Between the cost of dual layer DVDs, the cost of hard drive space, and the speeds of internet connections, as well as the heavy laws in place against even non-profit copyright infringing distributors, it's not really feasible for any but the uber-geek to pirate DVDs in the comfort of his/her home. Give it 5 or 10 years and this will change, of course (the laws will probably get stricter, but solve the other three and it really won't matter).

The first few DDoS attacks on their servers should be more than enough to convince the public that this is a Bad Idea.

DDoS attack using what, a virus and people's modems? Doesn't seem very feasible.

Re:Networking required

[anthony_dipierro]

I'll see if I can find something, but this was just something I heard a while ago which might not in fact be true. In fact, looking for some info to show you I've actually read a lot which leads me to believe I was previously misinformed.

Re:Networking required

[swillden]

And that's just one example of a legitimate use that is incompatible with network access.

Not to mention the case of anyone who wants to put their TV and DVD player in a room that doesn't have a phone line or other means of network access. That's a much bigger problem, IMO.

Re:Networking required

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like the recent fallen idol to the failed DRM schemers that know they have lost but refuse to give up.....DIVX, people will not buy spying devices for installation in their own machines. Just why would any thinking person smart enough to be able to use his/her computer for business or personal financial uses want to compromise his/her security and freedom and privacy for a piece of transitory dreck like a bad movie? Especially a bad movie that may be 'limited' to being 'authorized' to play a limited number of times. The presence of a 'phone home' method is a security leak that would be intolerable to most businesses. If you think not, try asking your CFO at the place you work for the master password to the computer on which the financial records are stored. I personally would never allow a piece of foreign secret software free reign to rummage through my personal machine with a carte blanche license to spy, kill, insert malware like itself capable of virtually anything, etc. That carte blanche is exactly what the 'entertainment' industry would demand, too. Look at today's illegal 'shrink wrap' licences.

Re:Networking required

[lee1026]

well, we can always copy the DVDs from blockbuster - there is no way for them to tell if the guy who trys to play it next time is renting it from blockbuster or if he is getting a mass priated disk.

Advertising to the content providers...

[garcia]

The UCLA research group is developing the software and hardware components of a system
that would embed DVDs with an RFID tag and DVD players with an RFID reader so that the tagged
DVDs would play only in RFID-enabled players and only if the reader could authenticate the
DVD's tag. In order to authenticate, the player would also need to link to some type of
online network, similar to the EPCglobal Network, that would associate the DVD with a legal
sale. Through this system, the copyright owners (the film production company and any other
license-holders of the content) would have digital rights management over the work. But
viewers would not be able to play the DVDs without an RFID-enabled player because the tag
would essentially lock the disc.

I don't see anything there that allows me to exercise fair-use. I need to use some special
DVD player (the market has already proven they don't like this), I need to have an Internet
connection, and I need to buy some special DVD...

I apparently can't make a backup copy for myself, move the content to portable formats, etc.
Hey UCLA Research Team, remember this is necessary. Oh wait, you aren't being paid by the
consumers, you're being paid by the content providers...

The Motion Picture Association of America, a trade group that represents major Hollywood
studios, estimates that the U.S. motion picture industry loses more than $3 billion annually
in potential worldwide revenue due to piracy.

LOL. This is difficult to prove and we all know why. Thanks for the blantant bullshit
though.

This sounds more like advertising to the content providers than it sounds like some sort of
press release of what hey have/can do.

Re:Advertising to the content providers...

[anthony_dipierro]

I don't see anything there that allows me to exercise fair-use.

If by fair-use you mean making a perfect digital copy, well, that's the point.

Re:Advertising to the content providers...

[Anonymous Coward]

now you no longer need to sneak a video camera into the theatre, you can do it in the privacy of your own home lol

Simpler solution:

[Anonymous Coward]

Release the movie on a regular DVD as soon as it hits theaters. There's a guy down the street from me who is already using this business model, and it seems to work.

Re:Simpler solution:

[TheRaven64]

Better still, sell it in cinemas, and give a discount to people who went to see the film. If I have seen a good film, I would be very likely to impulse-purchase a copy on DVD as I exit the cinema (even with no `special' features). By delaying the release for a few months, they give me time to find other things to spend that money on.

Make DRM open

[Anonymous Coward]

Make it real simple cause it's always crackable, why dont the MPAA and RIAA face the reality?

Make DRM open so individuals can sell music without having to pay for a DRM scheme.

A tag in the ID3 sounds fine to me. Yes it can be hacked, but most people wont bother hacking it.

Pirates won't need to use handycams anymore...

[Anonymous Coward]

Now they'll be able to crack the DRM DVD and release DVD quality rips of movies that are in theatres.

there's always the manual method

[Bananatree3]

Play the CD in a DRM player, and record from the speakers....

Re:there's always the manual method

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm assuming you meant "record from line-out", because recording from speakers would sound just about as good as recording underwater. With electric guitars. In a shark tank.

It is true you can take do the line out / line in trick, but you lose fidelity, even if you have an expensive fancypants analog-to-digital converter, which you onboard sound "card" certainly is not.

Once you've digitized a signal (which the studio does for you), the best way to copy is to keep it digital all the way through.

Re:there's always the manual method

[Anonymous Coward]

but if it saves me 20 fucking dollars I dont care about that little signal quality loss. (I mean the line-out trick, the speaker trick, I cant stand that much noise quality loss.)

Re:there's always the manual method

[Anonymous Coward]

So you lose a small bit of quality once during the ripping process, big deal. A one time quality hit is much better than the multiple generation loss of copying VHS or audio tapes. I would bet the conversion to even high quality Xvid or mp3 would be worse than the analog-digital conversion assuming good quality equipment was used.

Re:there's always the manual method

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be delighted to see you holding a handycam all through Titanic...

Re:there's always the manual method

[mattyrobinson69]

dont modern soundcards come with a digital in/out? spif or something, although im not sure.

Re:there's always the manual method

[Anonymous Coward]

You can in fact take analog CD audio out, patch it to a line in, and depending on your DAC, get a perfect 1-to-1 copy. I've done this many times before!

Yes, you lose fidelity, but as long as your sampling rate is better than what you are sampling, you can convert it without loss.

Just a MPAA pipe dream

[Valacosa]

"Rajit Gadh, professor in UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science and director of WINMEC, says that the research going into the project is targeted at determining whether the concept is technologically feasible. `We're in the very early stages of this project--the first research stage'"

Someone care to explain to me how putting a RFID chip in a DVD could prevent a computer from reading the raw content of the disc and cracking that? I think it's been shown time and time again that DRM will be cracked, especially when the new technology can be attacked with conventional hardware.

Basically, reading the article this both seems technically impossible and a far way off.

On another note, if the MPAA really wanted the DVD to be available when the movie was in theatres, they'd just make it so now. But they're smarter than that; they know people won't pay twice for the same movie if both options are available at the same time.

Re:Just a MPAA pipe dream

[mabhatter654]

It would only work with the new "blue ray" players.. they could be made to only play RFID'd discs... after all, we've all got DVD players already so it's not an inconvenience. We have HDMI too, that will soon effect all HDTVs and could probably be used in computer monitors too. again, the combination is unique proving that at least consumer devices can't "cheat".

It's a genius idea frankly. something Unique is needed to be part of the the next spec...RFID is the simplest thing to use. mold it right into the disc and the content could be keyed to accept only those numbers of RFID tags as keys. Nobody but certified people could have the RFID discs.. That raises some anti-competitive concerns, but we'll still have DVD & CD for years to come.

I'm a big fan of fair use, but they've got to do something to "protect" their businesses. Sure, eventually you'd create copies from a "blue ray" computer drive, but normal players couldn't ever play them...reducing the rampant piracy... of course most pirated things on the net are DVIX anyway...so people aren't exactly stopped by it. But it would prevent "casual" copying... but again, not "downcopying" via PC to something standard like DVD after it was cracked.

The only benifit would be that harware makers could finally build "convergence" devices like TiVO for DVD & CD because they could guarantee the data couldn't be pulled off the device. Combine with technologies like apple's airport express you could really do some neat stuff.

I don't like the "phone home" requirements though, that could be a real turn off for most people. I suppose a device could track the keys for what it already authenticated, but that again limits the really interesting stuff like mobile and piping usage.. unless the device could "pass" it's key off to other lesser devices... or include multiple copies in alternate formats! like a CD player passing it's tag id off to an iPod... I Really don't like the idea of content providers having "rights" to the media after you recieve it.. that is a key part of why we have copyright in the first place.. because we need an "artifical" way to protect something that's not protectable. Allowing publishers to "edit" usage after the sale is just against the entire system we have in place... it's almost as bad as skipping commercials!!!

Re:Just a MPAA pipe dream

[mpeg4codec]

From the article:

But viewers would not be able to play the DVDs without an RFID-enabled player because the tag would essentially lock the disc.

Obviously the article is not very technical, as it is geared toward a non-techincal audience. However, I would imagine the tag would contain some sort of encrypted key [that theoretically only MPAA-licenced players would be able to decrypt] that can be used to decrypt the contents of the disc. It wouldn't have to be anything too complex, maybe something like a CSS key. This is just speculation, of course.

DRM is sort of like an arms race. The hackers are trying to stay one step ahead of the *AA and the *AA is trying to stay one step ahead of the hackers. They can keep coming up with new DRM methods, and it will only be a matter of time before these are broken. Now repeat this ad infinitum.

Re:Just a MPAA pipe dream

[surprise_audit]

Three things will happen:

1. "I'm returning this DVD player because it's busted."
   "Did you hook it up to the Internet?"
   "No, why?"
   "All DVD players have to be hooked up to the Internet now."
   "I don't have Internet. Give me my money back."

2. "I'm returning this DVD because it won't play."
   "Did you buy a new player?"
   "No, the old one works perfectly fine for all other DVDs."
   "Well, you need a new, Internet-connected player for the new DVDs."
   "Screw that. Give me my money back."

3. "Breaking news: DVD Jon was arrested again for cracking the new DVD encryption. He was released minutes later when crowds of enraged would-be movie watchers stormed the police station and trashed the building. Film at 11 (brought to you unencrypted courtesy of DVD Jon)"

Questions ?

[karvind]

From the article: "In order to authenticate, the player would also need to link to some type of online network, similar to the EPCglobal Network, that would associate the DVD with a legal sale. Through this system, the copyright owners (the film production company and any other license-holders of the content) would have digital rights management over the work."

That doesn't sound right. The RFID is only a way of providing a unique identifier to a stamped DVD. Does it mean I have to authenticate my DVDs online to play it ?

From the article: "But viewers would not be able to play the DVDs without an RFID-enabled player because the tag would essentially lock the disc."

Now we have to buy another DVD player ??

Re:Questions ?

[VidEdit]

"From the article: "In order to authenticate, the player would also need to link to some type of online network, similar to the EPCglobal Network, that would associate the DVD with a legal sale. Through this system, the copyright owners (the film production company and any other license-holders of the content) would have digital rights management over the work.""

This is very unlikey to be implemented on the current generation of Standard Definition DVDs. This is Divx version 2. The consumer gets no additional features from this lock down and thus nobody is going to buy RFID locked DVDs or players. The public already soundly rejected the Divx DVD player that required the player to authenticate the DVD via a phone line. Under this new idea, the DVD player will have to connect to the internet...like that isn't going to cause problems.

This authentication system means the studios can keep a realtime database of every movie you watch, whether purchased or rented. It also means the studios could prevent the rental of DVDs by limiting the number of machines you can authorize to play a DVD, or even limiting the number of plays.

This is DRM of the very worst kind--so bad even Joe Consumer won't fall for it.

Re:Questions ?

[geminidomino]

Under this new idea, the DVD player will have to connect to the internet...like that isn't going to cause problems.

Sounds like you could get around it just as easily as I got around playing Phantasy Star Online (DC ver) on the free "unofficial" servers.

1. Monitor outgoing internet traffic to determine IP address(es)
   
2. Write a daemon that returns a valid authentication token.
   
3. Tweak router/firewall to forward authentication server IPs to your internal daemon.
   
   

There will always be a way to "pirate"

[rob_squared]

If this lets you watch it outside of the theater, it is very possible to get a camcorder and record it from the screen that way. I know it's an ugly solution, but people already do it in theaters, it will be done.

Re:There will always be a way to "pirate"

[builderbob_nz]

Actually you may have hit something there. This wont stop piracy at all, in fact anyone with a TV capture card will be able to do this and end up with better quality than would be possible from a camcorder.

So basically...

[BalorTFL]

...they want consumers to completely replace their current DVD players, and require the new ones to connect to the net when you want to watch a movie? I really don't think this is going to fly with the average Joe. They might be able to piggy-back it onto the next-gen HD/Blu-Ray discs, but for now it's just another MPAA pipe dream.

Re:So basically...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a DVD player in my car for my kids - great for those long trips. So am I supposed to tell them "Sorry kids, you can't watch your DVDs anymore - Daddy's car isn't hooked up to the Internet."

And if you're watching "Fahrenheit 911" on DVD...

[Anonymous Coward]

You will immediately be reported to Homeland Security and the White House.

Burn, Hollywood, Burn

[Doc Ruby]

This proposal is exactly backwards. Hollywood's only advantage over the Internet in content distribution is the physical reality of premieres in theaters. Even if the movie has been leaked, lots of people want to go to the theatrical premiere.

Hollywood has relied more and more on the opening weekend, with unprecedented simultaneous premieres on many screens across the land. They could invest more glitz, making every premiere like the Golden Age fantasies, with skytracking spotlights, red carpets, celebrities and other hype that leverages their control of the unique spacetime event. They might hold advance ticket sale lotteries which draw stars to winning venues. They could cover the whole thing on TV, making 15-minute stars of attendees. And raise the ticket price, sell event merchandise. Ultimately, they'd have economics which demand seeding the "pirates" with copies linked to premiere sales.

The movie becomes the ad for the event, merchandise and access to the stars. They're already headed there; desperate DRM schemes like this one from UCLA just get in the way of a workable business model that exploits the Internet, rather than fighting their best customers and partners.

Pr0n example-Drug Dealers.

[Anonymous Coward]

" I'm surprised that movie industry is not following up how pr0n industry can be so successful and profitable."

It's called "The Drug Dealer" model. And as much as humanity is lead by it's gonads. It works beautifully.

Re:Pr0n example-Drug Dealers.

[Foobar of Borg]

It's called "The Drug Dealer" model.

Well, Lucas seems to follow this model pretty well, too :-). "Really, we do need to see the redone versions of movies we saw 25 years ago! And the next new Star Wars film really will be better!"

Hope it fails...

[Adrian Lopez]

If this ever makes it to market I hope it goes the way of the dinosaur, just like DivX (the DVD technology, not the codec).

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Burn, Pirate, Burn

[Anonymous Coward]

"This proposal is exactly backwards. Hollywood's only advantage over the Internet in content distribution is the physical reality of premieres in theaters. Even if the movie has been leaked, lots of people want to go to the theatrical premiere."

No pirate has ever created what they steal. Ever!

Re:Burn, Pirate, Burn

[Doc Ruby]

What are you talking about?

MOD parent \/

[gerf]

Why do you assume that RFID is "evil" or unwanted by geeks? I use it at work to track pallets in conveyor lines. You can't imagine how much easier it is to track pallets with parts on them rather than track parts on a rolling conveyor using prox sensors.

Now, DRM is another story. I think that you've simply seen too many RFID articles on /. that link DRM, personal product, or human tracking with RFID. Those are completely unrelated to RFID in general, and are mere uses of the tool.

Overall, I think your opinion is as blindingly focused as those of the MPAA, RIAA, and all the similar organizations that you despise.

Re:MOD parent \/

[anthony_dipierro]

Depending how broadly you want to look at it, DRM would have positive uses too. Smart cards with digital e-cash? That'd require DRM, in my view. Of course, at the moment the technology just isn't there, as all current DRM schemes can be hacked given enough time and energy.

Re:MOD parent \/

[Lifewish]

It was a joke. I fully understand that every technology has beneficial effects, including RFID. I understand that the majority of privacy issues are overstated, although things like chipped passports still worry me. I am well aware how useful RFID can be in a number of situations, such as the one you described.

I understand that DRM, while being problematic for privacy advocates and those of us who like complete control over our own computers, is, when properly applied, one plausible way of encouraging more people to acquire non-infringing copies of media. I don't like it cos I fit into both the above categories but, as long as they don't figure out how to stop me re-encoding media in a decent format, I can live with their attempts.

I'm not keen on the RIAA or MPAA cos, viewed as monolithic organisations, they're both bastards. However, I understand that it's naive to label any one organisation or individual as completely good or evil - for example, a friend of mine works for Microsoft, and another is getting his education courtesy of IBM.

None of this stops me seeing the article title, having a sudden image of many millions of geeks having spontaneous heart-attacks, ruining my keyboard with the proverbial Morning Dew and deciding to share that little frisson of amusement with the rest of Slashdot, in the hope of cheering people up. My investments in the keyboard-manufacturing industry have nothing to do with it at all.

Re:MOD parent \/

[Lehk228]

I wish i could work with RFID, i stock shelves and it REALLY sucks funding cheese on the shelf that expired over theee months ago (yes this has happened before) with RFID i would just walk down the aisle with a wand, it would beep frantically if there was something expired already, then display the item(s) it found by name, a hich beep would sound if there was something expiring today, tomorrow, or the next day, and a low beep if there was anything this week but not within 3 days. (this is the system i am envisioning, it would be so sweet... no more digging through every fucking yogurt cup to make sure some wanker didn't put an old one in the back)

Re:MOD parent \/

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, your job could become so easy you probably wouldn't be needed anymore.

Re:MOD parent \/

[Lehk228]

getting rid of old products on the shelf takes less than 4% of my day on average, so i doubt that, but it would make things easier for me, cheaper for the owners of the store, and better for the customers to not have expired product on the shelf

Forumalic Post

[Monkeman]

[obligatory "Big Brother" reference] [obligatory out of place Microsoft flame] [obligatory Soviet Russia Joke] [more 1984 references] [link to funny picture] [link to Goatse] [gung-ho "revolutionary" idea] [flaming MPAA/RIAA] [more Microsoft flaming]

Re:Forumalic Post

[Paladin144]

[obligatory reference to lameness of above post] [pedantic criticism of minor points] [withering sarcasm] [general complaint about /.] [attempt to stay ontopic] [implies poster is 15 and lives in basement] [failure to understand humor in any of its many forms] [stupid sig]

Divx

[jimi the hippie]

Didn't they try this with Divx discs?? As I remember it didn't work out so well.

RFID Disks & Players == BAD IDEA

[ArielMT]

I live an hour from anywhere, and the only DVD player I have is my PC. I got tired of Windows long ago and put Linux on it, and it plays my DVDs without problems.

Now these liberal-indoctrinated college pinheads, naturally believing piracy to be bad, but without understanding the real problem, are telling me that I'll have to buy a TV set and "RFID-enabled" DVD player just to watch a movie that I pay good money for? All in the name of stopping piracy?

Wrong answer. It is not the end that justifies the means, Hollywood and college kids. It's the means which must justify the end.

Re:RFID Disks & Players == BAD IDEA

[Anonymous Coward]

Now these liberal-indoctrinated college pinheads [...]

Because conservative-indoctrinated college pinheads are somehow above such notions? Do you just go around slinging anti-liberal rhetoric where ever you think it might stick?

Sorry, champ. It's not sticking. Try a substance other than bullshit sometime, it might help.

Unless the industry happens to bribe-er-persuade the current House and Senate to make such DRM-enabled players mandatory, then they'll simply go about the tried and true method of appealing to one of America's holy virtues: greed.

Throw enough flashy new features in a player, and the public will run over each to get their hands on it; DRM and all.

Re:RFID Disks & Players == BAD IDEA

[Anonymous Coward]

Wahahahahaha! You're blaming 'liberals' for this?

This is an industry bought and paid for project, pure and simple. If you look at what those 'liberal minded' professors and college students generally do it's mainly opposed to this sort of crap. Stuff like Felton at Princeton University against the RIAA DRM systems and Touretzky at Carnegie Mellon with the DeCSS stuff. I'd hardly call college campuses a hotbed of DRM supporters.

Both political parties are dicking us over on the issue, but I'd like to point out that it's extreme conservative Orrin Hatch leading the assault, and liberal Rick Boucher leading the fight to undo the DMCA.

*If* there is any liberal/conservative connection at all, it's a conservative slant to join the crusade to "defend property rights".

So, um, listening to this

[mcc]

This just sounds like DIVX with some buzzwords added.

I imagine if they try to productize this, they'll fail for the same reason DIVX failed; the technology demands far too much of and is far too restrictive on the consumer while offering no benefits to anyone except the producer.

If movie companies want DVDs available at the same time the movie comes out they can just bloody well sell them. It's amazing how much proposed technology serves no purpose except attempting to overcome corporate insecurity*.

* Corporate insecurity. "Insecurity" not as in "Inadequately guarded or protected; unsafe" but "insecurity" as in "Lacking self-confidence; plagued by anxiety".

Re:So, um, listening to this

[surprise_audit]

With more and more cars having in-car DVD players, I'd imagine the whole idea of authenticating via Internet will grind to a halt as soon as it impacts the auto-makers in Detroit. Hollywood might also find it difficult to get the new format DVDs shipped too, if enough truckers get pissed off because they can't watch a DVD in the cab during a rest break.

DIVX revisited?

[zakezuke]

Not to be confused by DivX
I'm refering to DIVX the format sold at Circuit City and failed.

You buy a disc... DIVX, RFID enabled or otherwise, and you gotta wait for network authorization to play it. So no chance of the kids watching it on the road in your SUV, no chance of watching the flick on that flight with your laptop. I can only suspect loss resale rights assuming the RFID tag is locked into your DVD player.

DIVX at least had the added benifit that it was like a rental but no late fee. Cool in that respect but not cool you had to plop down money for a special DVD player that attached to your phone line, assuming you even had a phone line near your TV.

RFID enabled discs might carry with it the benifit of watching an early release, but I don't see that being enough to give up the rights we presently have with regular DVDs.

My DRM management solution...

[InvalidError]

Every time I see studios or the RIAA/MPAA try to impose further restrictions on fair use I think it is about time people started standing up to protect their fair-use right by boycotting content.

I practically stopped bothering with 'entertainment' more than a decade ago and personally think worthwhile entertainment is increasingly few and far between, getting thinner each time.

Instead of trying to produce really good stuff, studios go for the quick bucks and stretch them with DRM. From my point of view, this will ultimately lead to a lose-lose situation.

What does RFID add to this?

[Michael Woodhams]

You have an object that transmits information to the player via two methods: optical disk, and RFID. What is the point? Why not just put the data from the RFID onto the disk instead? Is it just a techinical issue that it is easer to add a unique ID to each disk by gluing on an RFID than to write it to the disk?

Meanwhile, people will get one of the new players, record the movie off the video output, redigitize and distribute. It is easer than smuggling a video camera into the theatre.

Re:What does RFID add to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good question. When I consider all the points raised here, and your question, I can't help but think that they've lost their freakin' minds. More money, more complexity, more hassle, no apparent benefit for us, the people who ultimately pick up all their bills, but they expect we'll buy it because... because... they've lost their freakin' minds. That's all I can come up with.

Re:What does RFID add to this?

[uberdave]

I think that basically, yes, it is easier. DVDs and CDs are not written or burned, they are stamped in a press.

Re:What does RFID add to this?

[AdamInParadise]

I'm thinking that they are planning to use a "smart" RFID tag, with an embedded microprocessor, like the one you get on some settop boxes. The basic idea is that the "master key" is inside the chip (and you can't get it out without some a very, very expensive tools). Then the player queries the chip for a session key every, say, ten seconds, and this session key can be used to decrypt 10 seconds of raw data.

You can copy the raw data, but you can't clone a smart RFID chip, so the movie is tied to physical medium. If an online connection is required, such a scheme can be very strong.

Please, do not try to point out the glaring security holes in the scheme above, this is only an example that explain why they are working with RFID chips.

Re:What does RFID add to this?

[Pofy]

>Please, do not try to point out the glaring
>security holes in the scheme above,

The thing is, ANY such scheme will always just be one big "security hole" since the whole point of it is prevent the user from getting to the movie, yet the whole point of it is to get the movie to the customer. It is a conflict impossible to solve really. The only thing I can see here (although it has nothing to do with the RFID) is that one can lock the customers out until a specific date by having the key only availble by a phone home on the specific date. That works.

Re:What does RFID add to this?

[ArbitraryConstant]

So what you're saying is that the RFID chip they're planning to use is stronger than the one they want to put in my passport/RealID? ...

Yeah, I can believe that.

Re:What does RFID add to this?

[Alsee]

The point is that every RFID will have at a minimum a unique serial number, if not other data as well. This at least lets them track down the point of sale. The decryption key would not be on the disc and would not be in the RFID and would not be in the player. Your player reads the key and then "phones home" telling the MPAA your unique DVD player ID number and movie ID and the unique RFID number. They then send the movie decryption key, and they encrypt that so that only your DVD player can decrypt it.

So they know want DVD player you have, and they know which exact disk you bought, and if they feel like it they can blacklist you and your DVD player doesn't work any more.

-

Re:What does RFID add to this?

[rednuhter]

Meanwhile, people will get one of the new players, record the movie off the video output, redigitize and distribute. It is easer than smuggling a video camera into the theatre.
except when analog connectors vanish completely and digital ones are full encoded.
Have you ever tried recording via a video camera pointed at a TV screen ?

Re:What does RFID add to this?

[surprise_audit]

What about a video camera pointed at a video projector wall screen??

If you have a hammer everything is a nail

[EmbeddedJanitor]

The old adage is often true. In an RFID industry journal, you'd expect to see some outlanding ideas about what you could possibly do with RFID. I'm sure the industry would love to sell a RFID reader with every DVD player and an RFID with every DVD. That this is currently entirely impractical and unacceptable at present is not important

History shows us that people are subject to the tyrrany of small increments. Huge increments in cost , restrictions and rights are generally unacceptable, but people don't seem to mind small increments. Likely in 10 years time most people won't mind using an RFID DVD system so that terrorists can't watch Sleepless in Seattle (or whatever other line they spin us).

Re:Pr0n==cheap

[WormholeFiend]

Using unknown actors is hit and miss...

Take the Star Wars series for example.

In the original series, some unknowns became big names, while some other main character actors didn't do much else.

I'm curious to see who, among the previously unknown actors in Episodes 1-2-3 are going to go back to obscurity relatively quick...

DRM != Digitial Rights Management

[codergeek42]

It's all marketing bullshit to make people think it's a Good Thing(tm). In fact, it's a horrible thing and should be referred to instead as Digital Restrictions Management...

It's security by obscurity...

[codergeek42]

If it was open then people would be simply able to remove it entirely from their files. The whole idea of DRM is to kee it closed so people cannot easily crack it and "improperly" use the files (like for multimedia and stuff).

Give it a week...

[Anonymous Coward]

... and this (as with ALL other types of encryption/protection) will be broken...

I'm not sure why anyone actually bothers with this kind of thing since the only people it discourages from copying are those that don't bother anyway... the "nasty-goblins" will just get around it some way and copy to their hearts delight... I'm suprised the movie industry hasn't realised that by now... also cause most of the illegal copying goes on in foreign countries (yes I'm looking at you China, and you Russia) and then becomes grey imports this is just gonna mean that they get the hands on a good copy of the films straight away, i.e. they won't have to wait 3 months or blackmail a member of cinema staff... I suppose they have to be seen to be doing something...

Re:Give it a week...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's going both ways. One of the reasons why pirated DVDs are so popular in China is that you can buy the movie several months before it comes out in the cinemas. The person who originally copied it damn sure wasn't in China.

MOD grandparent /\

[ArielMT]

RFID tags embedded in the disposable packaging and reuseable palettes I can understand. That is indeed a practical and productive use of RFID technology.

However, RFID tags embedded in the product itself is a Very Bad Idea (TM). The article discusses nothing more than combating lawlessness by punishing the law-abiding. By definition, the law-abiding are not lawless, so even if this idea catches on it's doomed to fail in its stated goal.

Bullshit!

[Loundry]

Gadh believes consumers would be interested in purchasing specialized early releases of DVDs, as well as the specialized DVD players needed to play them

"Specialized" DVD players that play "Specialized" disks to go along with the other 9, big, ugly boxes collecting dust on top of your TV (along with the other "normal" DVD player which plays only "normal" DVDs).

It won't work. History says so. Gadh believes consumers will be interested in purchasing this moronic system because it's in his interest to believe it. He's paid to believe it.

Re:Bullshit!

[MEGAMAID]

god, the solution is so simple. Simply make a "Specialized" TV which is needed to go along with the "Specialized" DVD player! Solves that problem and you, the consumer get to buy even more shit!

Re:Bullshit!

[Rakarra]

"Specialized" DVD players that play "Specialized" disks to go along with the other 9, big, ugly boxes collecting dust on top of your TV (along with the other "normal" DVD player which plays only "normal" DVDs).

It won't work. History says so. Gadh believes consumers will be interested in purchasing this moronic system because it's in his interest to believe it. He's paid to believe it.

There is one way this could work.. the public won't accept it if there is no incentive to upgrade. This additional "restriction" would have to be paired with an upgrade incentive powerful enough to overwhelm the negatives. Say.. "well, you have to buy a new machine to play HD-DVDs anyway, we'll just mandate this in the new standard. Is it too late for them to try to shoehorn this sort of thing into Blue-Ray and/or HD-DVD?

And if an illegal copy is found?

[adamdewolf]

How about a write-once area on the DVD and if a bad copy is found, the DVD player writes "GAME OVER" to that portion of the disk and then it no longer plays....

hmmmm, didn't some other type of dial-up copy-protect sytem try this sorta thing?

Oh, I hope they do this!

[Dr. Spork]

This is an absolutely absurd and annoying piece of technology. You can bet that this thing will be cracked very quickly, or tools will develop that capture the digital output stream of the DVD player. Then presto, it's in the wild, or at least copied onto another DVD without this stupid RF tag protection.

Re:Oh, I hope they do this!

[scottme]

If I was the studios, I'd make sure that any capturable form of the output was fingerprinted in a way that would allow me to track back to the player and/or the copy of the disc and/or the source address from which it was validated and thus be able to pinpoint the source of the "leak".

Of course this isn't going to stop leaks, but it could make life very uncomfortable for casual amateur pirates. Pros will likely work around it - if it's obvious that sources are likely to be traceable, the black hats just need to do enough analysis to determine the nature and format of the fingerprints. Obscuring the source fingerprints might be as simple as doing two or more independent captures (different players, different media, different source address) and generating an averaged digital copy.

But I'm starting to think that the studios could raise the bar high enough to make it enough of a pain to rip their content that only commercially motivated and funded pirates will bother to do it.

Re:Oh, I hope they do this!

[Vitriol Angst]

I don't.

Not that it couldn't be surmounted. But more and more the average person is made to become a criminal to ensure more revenue for less effort on the parts of copyright and patent holders. You can already get more jail time for copyright violations than violent crime.

People already subscribe to cable and satellite and buy DVDs and go to movies. So the fact that people can possibly download something illegal has negligible effect on convenience expenses for entertainment. In other words, if the average household expenditure is say, $200 per month, it won't go up any, it will mean fewer entertainment products purchased. Even less of that might be movies (like the way music has shrunk). Having encrypted, RFID DVDs with a pay-as-you-go model isn't much different from Pay-Per-View TV. The chance of anyone re-purchasing OLD content becomes a nuisance factor. They will have the cost of maintaining a system that has too compete with NEW content. This is like subsidizing video game consoles with the purchase of games--you better hope people buy more games.

I think the statistics would back me up on consumers buying more entertainment when it becomes cheaper. I get 24/7/365 entertainment on DishNetwork for about $80 per month (with premium channels) on about 200 channels. Looked at one way, the movie industry could say they were ripped off, because I only payed a fraction of a penny on something I theoretically could have seen. Looked at another way, that is $80 more than I spend on music CDs--which I totally quit bothering with because an hour of music isn't worth $14.

Of course, when entertainment becomes too expensive, then people are going to stop filling their days with fluff and maybe, just maybe start thinking and voting. So, maybe the government might actually stop this, because too much DRM will mean people are less distracted and will start getting angry.

At least, the publishing industry might really appreciate RFID disabled movies...

DVD Storm troopers

[DigiShaman]

ST (storm trooper): Halt there citizen!

Me: AAAhhh, where did you come from?!

ST:From a land far far away and a....never mind that. Hand over that DVD.

ME: Why, what did I do, I just wanted to watch the latest flick that came out.

ST: Yes, but you forgot to register your DVD with the Empire Media.

Me: Ohhh nooooosss! So will I get fined?!

ST: No, you just die.

Me: AAhhhhhrrhrrrghhhhh nooooooooo.

Re:Pr0n==cheap

[shutdown -p now]

This is very true. I never understood why, rationally speaking, should a movie star (or a pop singer, a soccer player etc) get such ridiculous money. Is it how much their contribution to society really worth? I very much doubt it.

Business and technology

[Mother Sha Boo Boo]

I still think that business should adapt to technology, and not the other way around.

Re:Business and technology

[Jim_Callahan]

Yeah, except that that would be an inversion of the process of invention. Things get invented because someone wants them to be invented, not the other way around.

Re:Business and technology

[Alsee]

I still think that business should adapt to technology, and not the other way around

You're obviously stuck in a Pre-911 Mindset.

-

Re:Pr0n==cheap

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

I'm not sure about the country you live in but in most of the world the amount of money someone gets paid isn't a measure of the worth of their contribution to society, and nor is it meant to be.

Every movie going to include a player & a TV?

[Kerhop]

I recall awhile ago some radio stations were given demo CD's inside a portable CD player that was glued shut and the headphones were glued into the jack (or something like that). The fact that any device whether it be a RFID DVD player or whatever has to output to a display device of some sort. This is great if the consumer has a newer VCR or TV that's aware of the broadcast flag or whatever the latest fad is, however all it takes is one person with a first-generation VCR to record the movie and then capture into an MPEG in their computer. It's going to be a never-ending battle.

Wasn't Nintendo talking about doing this.

[rindeee]

IIRC, Nintendo had considered putting a very small passive RFID imbedded in the hub of their disks for the Game Cube (I'm assuming that they did not do this). It seemed at the time to be a great way to stop game priating. Granted, the simplest way to defeat would be a hardware hack to get the console to ignore the lack of RFID which would make duplicating the RFID moot. Anyone else recall this, or am I dreaming (I have taken a great deal of cold medicine today).

Re:Wasn't Nintendo talking about doing this.

[Anonymous Coward]

They used a bar code instead of a RFID for that purpose. Current modchips that allow the playing of burned games are based around a swap method. The swap method is not needed for streaming games by using a modchip though.

Re:Wasn't Nintendo talking about doing this.

[rindeee]

Out of curiosity and pardoning my ignorance...what are "streaming games"?

Re:Wasn't Nintendo talking about doing this.

[NetNifty]

Basically I theres a hole in the networking part of Phantasy Star Online which lets you execute code remotely on the game cube. Exploiting this hole lets you "stream" games stored on another machine's HD over the network, so you can for example download GC games and play them on the GC.

Completely Screwed

[Anonymous Coward]

In 25 years, when either a large asteroid or WWIV decimates civilization, we will be back to caveman times.

You have a laptop with a manual which explains how to operate the local fusion power plant...but, you cannot authenticate with a Media Protection Regime server.

Ditto for the manual on agricultural methods, repairing that '69 Chevy, treating that bacterial infection, et cetera.

And besides that, all of society is headed towards renting everything: your home, your car, your movie collection, your books, even your underwear.

You buy Star Trek: TNG with RFID. You go to let your kids watch it in fifteen years, and guess what: Paramount decides that you thieving bastards watching those old episodes are cutting into the ratings of Star Trek: Braga Does Not Suck so they shutdown the authentication servers thus rendering your $5,000 collection of Star Trek history worthless.

Ford is really hurting in 2010, so, they stop authenticating the ignition sequence in your 2006 Ford Craptang that you have kept in spectacular shape.

Fruit-of-the-Loom wants you to buy new underwear, so, they turn off the authentication for your year old undies. Now, your washing machine will not run with these undies present.

You have been warned.

Re:Completely Screwed

[Lehk228]

don't forget renolds will turn off your tinfoil so the alien waves will pass straight through and take over your mind

Things never do change in this area

[suitepotato]

The MPAA still puts out their bogus estimation of lost monies that never would have being paid to them in a world of perfect DRM because the IP was total horsesh*t to begin with. Anyone remember the transition from cheap matinee movie houses to VCRs in the 70s to early 80s? Once, we had no choice but to listen to word of mouth of early victims or go see how bad it was ourself.

Then, cr*ppy movies got shunted to lower echelon theaters with lower ticket prices. Then to VCRs with the straight-to-video phenomenon. Given the pace of tech, the new lowest denominator should be straight-to-DiVX/MPEG2 and the industry should have already embraced it whole-heartedly. Of course, with the legendary mindset of people like Jack Valenti and his peers, it hasn't.

Instead, they're only encouraging piracy by not embracing the newer workable models, attempting to turn back the calendar to days where cr*p was forced onto us with no solution but total abstinence.

I might like to add that I've paid to see exactly three of the twenty-four movies I've seen in the last four years thanks to the movie industry's own largesse where promotional showing tickets are splurged to radio stations. Locally, my newspaper gets overflow tickets from one of several stations and so I see movies for free with the MPAA's and studios' blessings.

How is that any different in the end? Maybe releasing lower quality (camcorder screener) full length teaser copies to the net would actually drive people to the movies. In my case, they've driven me to buy DVDs. But still, they think they've lost on monies I was never going to pay them...

Who didn't see this sort of thing coming btw? Discs that have to have a sort of proximity sensor system to play because they're all invididually encrypted and the key to decrypt is on an rf chip embedded in the media? Easy to see this coming and just as easy to see mod-kits for the players hitting the net on Chinese web sites.

Good point; only one problem

[Lifewish]

As far as I can tell, this system is no more resistant than any other to the simple expedient of piping the dvd output to a file not the monitor/speakers.

Additionally, every extra layer of difficulty they add to the usage of DVDs just encourages more piracy. I can't play DVD x on my computer? Fine, I'll just go on the 'net, someone there will have it, and I won't even have to feel guilty.

I honestly can't see how the MPAA can continue to exist in its current form for much longer.

Re:Pr0n==cheap

[fembots]

I can't believe I'm saying this, but sometimes rich people get poorer.

MJ is reportedly spending $30 million per year more than he earns. I probably wouldn't earn $30 million in my whole life, yet someone is capable of spending that much more than he earns.

Similarly, the movie industry is digging its own grave by creating larger and larger expenses which it has to find more and more money to pay for.

Interesting idea.....

[Hits_B]

Too bad the existing theaters will scream bloody murder and try to kill it off due to the potential of lost revenues. They will have to sell a shitload of popcorn and sodas to make up for that....

"Sir that is two drinks and two small popcorns. Your total is $45.50. Have a nice day"

Re:Interesting idea.....

[MDGordon]

Sir that is two drinks and two small popcorns. Your total is $45.50. Have a nice day

Actually, I think that's what my total was last week. If you move the decimal over to the right one place, I think that will be a more accurate future representation.

Re:Pr0n==cheap

[anthony_dipierro]

Same reason you get fined $1000 for littering on the highway. It's not that your litter costs $1000 to clean up (more like $0.10), it's that you have to pay for the 10,000 other people who littered and didn't get caught.

With actors, sure, if you hit it big you make lots of money. But for every Brad Pitt there are 10,000 Nic Wegener's. It's not really fair, but for now it's the best we've got. At least we've got the freedom to choose whether to hack code for a decent living or to risk it all trying to be the next Will Smith.

Re:And if you're watching "Fahrenheit 911" on DVD.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you're reported to the looney bin... because you must have issues if you're willing to sit through a Michael Moore movie ;-)

The truth about dropping theater sales...

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

...the article mentioned that the industry needs something that can get people excited about going to the movies.

The Movie Industry says that due to lukewarm sales at the box office, ticket prices have to go up. Some say the turn out is low because it's more convenient to watch movies at home. I say this is BULLSHIT.

People do not go to the theaters anymore because it's not worth $10 a crack to see a movie on a screen that is not much larger than a big screen TV. Why spend $30 to $50 for a family to go out and watch a movie on a crappy screen? There is no reason.

Make screens as large as they used to be, and cap theater prices at $8. They will fill seats even for second run pictures.

The theater industry insults it's customers with a shitty product and than wonders why sales numbers are going down?

Who the hell in their right mind REALLY wants to watch a pirated film on a TV, for Christ's sake? NO ONE!

They could stop most piracy...

[raventh1]

If they just stopped trying to ruin the product, and get it out faster than pirates. They control the product, they can also get it out to the market faster than pirates. I know several people who never bought Doom3 that had it preordered, but got a pirate copy because it was out first.

The best way to defeat piracy is make no need. By creating more obstacles for the consumer, they make it easier to justify piracy (because Pirate copies don't have to call home to verify authenticity.)

Instead of spending money in court they should spend it on distribution. Napster only happend because it was the fastest way to get the product. If they were to release DVD videos at the time they premier in theaters they would stop camera piracy, and the motive for most casual pirates.

Re:They could stop most piracy...

[anthony_dipierro]

They could stop all piracy if they just released everything for free. Of course they wouldn't make very much money that way, and no, they could make up for it with volume.

I think you overestimate the number of people who used Napster because it was the fastest way to get the product vs. those who used it because they didn't have to pay for the product. I certainly fell under the latter, and most people I knew at the time did too.

A whole lot of people don't care about seeing every movie the instant it is released. Just look at how many people wait until the movie is released on DVD. And of the people who do want to see the movie as soon as it's released, the vast majority of them see it in the theatre.

So yeah, if all you care about is stopping piracy, it's really easy. But that's not what the MPAA's main concern is, it's with making money.

Re:Pr0n==cheap

[brogdon]

"You need CGI? No. You need expensive sets? No again."

People used to be able to say this type of thing about good movies. Maybe the reason the studios are so worried about losses due to piracy is that it might cause them to have to worry about silly things like artistry and solid writing. :)

all your stuff belongs to us

[Anonymous Coward]

That is the stupid idea that "intellectual" property owners seem to be saying.
It is as if their solution to protecting their backsides is to come up with more intellectual property instead of investing in ways of...oh I don't know... better marketing their wares...better quality products...adding non-piratable value to their merchendise... trusting their customers (we are still kings, right? If not, when did we become dethroned?)...

The very notion that you can purchase something and need to inform not only the merchant that you purchased it but also the manufacturer you purchased it seems great if there is warranty involved. However, when you extend that registration beyond warranty and make it registration for the sake of registration. Well, gee. Guess what? The grey and black markets will only become more resourceful and increase their sales.
What's next, are we going to have to inform Archer Daniels Midland that we are making corn bread for supper tonight? Tomorrow night, corn dogs! Oh. That's right. There'll be a chip for that. It will put it into our Permanent Records for us...er...well, for someone's eyes.

Re:Pr0n==cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

the directors are jsut as bad as any actor though

Re:Pr0n==cheap

[smileyy]

Simple. Because someone is willing to pay them that much. Welcome to the world of economics.

21st century product in 20th century market

[Simonetta]

All this DRM technology will fail its intended purpose because the MPAA companies are trying to protect a 20th century marketplace that is fading ever more each day.

20th century film marketing was based on the pay-per-view model where a central facility (the movie theater) charged each person a fixed fee (the box office admission) for each showing of the film. It didn't matter which film was showing; customers paid the same entry fee. Unpopular product would not collect as many fees as a more-popular title.

In this model there is no price flexibility for the consumer. It's strictly take-it-or-leave-it. This model works when there is a limited number of viewing openings available (the seats in the theater) and limited product (one print of the film per theater and only a dozen copies of the film in the metro area).

This model fails when there is nearly unlimited product (all film titles from the past 50 years) on DVD or unlimited view openings. What happens in this type of market is that the consumers get to bid on what they will pay and the terms that they will pay for the product. The new technology has changed the marketplace by removing most of the previous restrictions. The new technology is not going away.

DRM is an attempt to force the previous market conditions onto the new business environment. The MPAA companies (the film studios) want to have the highly profitable previous marketplace conditions with the greatly expanded marketplace made available by DVD. Beaucoup bucks if you can make it happen.

But it won't work. What will happen if the MPAA companies actually get DRM to work is that the market for film product will shrink to a small percentage of what it is today.

Successfully integrating DRM into film industry product is not going to bring back the old way of presenting film entertainment product. It's just going to drive the current film consuming public into some other form of entertainment.

One of the reasons that parents are encouraged to read fairy tales to their children is that it is an effective way to get the collective wisdom of the ages passed on to the adults of the modern age who are too vain to listen to good advice coming from any other source. The fairy tale that the MPAA should pay attention to the story of the goose that laid golden eggs. This goose would lay one egg a day of pure gold. The villagers got greedy and decided to kill the goose, cut it open and get all the golden eggs that must be inside. This they did. And they found no gold inside. And they never got any more golden eggs.

Like the villagers, the film studios don't understand the new film market. Adding DRM to the product that is providing their golder eggs will be like killing the goose.

Re:21st century product in 20th century market

[Queer Boy]

It's just going to drive the current film consuming public into some other form of entertainment.

It already has. Have you seen the ratio of money made between video games and movies? I remember in the 80's the idea that one day you would be able to interact with movies. That day is here.

Re:21st century product in 20th century market

[westlake]

This model fails when there is nearly unlimited product (all film titles from the past 50 years) on DVD or unlimited view openings. What happens in this type of market is that the consumers get to bid on what they will pay and the terms that they will pay for the product

Disney has sold about 23 million copies of "The Incredibles" in two months. Most studios would be estatic if a backlist title sold 200,000 copies in ten years.

But it won't work. What will happen if the MPAA companies actually get DRM to work is that the market for film product will shrink to a small percentage of what it is today.

No one will give a damn about DRM so long as pristine digital transfers, feature-rich, reference-standard, DVDs like The Incredibles sell at retail for under $20.

Re:21st century product in 20th century market

[webzombie]

You make an excellent point about why the current movie industry is doomed to failure if they do not adopt a more customer focused and modern approach to movie distribution.

Unfortunately, I think the MPAA along with the RIAA will continue to lobby hard, spend millions if not billions trying to defend a business model that is too old and stale to live much longer.

WTF?

[jedkiwi]

Ok, is it just me, or is the current state of technology just getting more and more stupid? Oh wow, a DVD has a RFID chip in it, this is really going to help DRM! Has it not occured to anyone that there will be DVD players that will play anything, just like region-free players? Or the fact that pirates, wheilding their shiny swords and wearing their funny hats will find a way around this?

Re:Pr0n==cheap

[toddestan]

I don't think the point of using unknowns is to help them launch their hugely successful acting career. It's about making movies cheaply. And Star Wars (atleast the first one) did this very well.

Why they don't release DVDs immediately?

[X.25]

I never understood why movie industry doesn't release movies on DVD at the same time they show up in theater?

I don't go to movie theaters, so why do I have to wait months before being able to see the movie?

Could someone explain it to me?

Thanks.

Re:Why they don't release DVDs immediately?

[surprise_audit]

They want big ticket sales in the theaters, then they release to DVD-for-rental, to capture the eyeballs of people that don't want to shell out for the tickets, then they release DVDs for general sale.

It's all designed to maximise profit. If you could buy the DVD on release day, they think they wouldn't see the big ticket sales. The only way they could win on that would be if the $15 DVD could only be watched by one person, once. If two people watch the DVD instead of buying $8 tickets, they lose $1 immediately, and every subsequent viewing is pure loss.

Focus on content, not protecting crap

[frdmfghtr]

Maybe if the motion picture companies focused more on making the content worthwhile, there would be less motivation to copy movies.

The digital format of most films and music released today has led to its increased piracy. The quality of video and audio recordings based in analog technology, such as cassette or VCR tapes, decreases each time an original version is copied.

No, a crappy movie is still a crappy movie, whether it is the first copy or the 1000th copy.

When digital recordings, such as CDs and DVDs, are copied, however, no quality is lost.

You can't lose what you don't have to start with.

The group will also need to develop a system for writing to the tags, a platform for associating DVDs with their purchasers or owners and a means of encrypting the tag data.

Associating a DVD with a particular owner? Right there is baaad news. What is it called, First Sale doctrine or something? I ask because I don't recall the actual name, but you get my point.

Past anti-copy technology has been foiled by simple tricks with markers and clever people cracking weak encryption. I'd bet a dollar or two that this will be no exception.

Note to the **AA: focus more on making the content/experience worth the price of admission/sale/whatever, and people will purchase it. If the public can't enjoy entertainment on their own terms, one of two things will happen:

(1) WE (as in the public) will stop paying for content, or

(2) The aforementioned clever people will break your protection and get the content for free and enjoy it how they wish.

Either way, you lose.

(BTW...the MPAA website is "temporarily unavailable.")

Re:Focus on content, not protecting crap

[anthony_dipierro]

Maybe if the motion picture companies focused more on making the content worthwhile, there would be less motivation to copy movies.

Huh? Wouldn't there be more motivation to copy movies if the movies were more worthwile?

Note to the **AA: focus more on making the content/experience worth the price of admission/sale/whatever, and people will purchase it.

Oh, right, because people are just dying to volunteer to pay for something they could otherwise get for free. All those songs on Napster, they're the least popular ones, the ones that no one wants to buy.

Re:Focus on content, not protecting crap

[adamdewolf]

A quick call to their hosting company and I was told that MPAA.COM is on a shared server, is down and currently running a check disk on all volumes.

Re:Focus on content, not protecting crap

[drsmithy]

Oh, right, because people are just dying to volunteer to pay for something they could otherwise get for free.

When it marketed appropriately, or convenient enough, people will happily pay for things they could otherwise get much cheaper, or free.

Exhibit A: bottled water

Exhibit B: fancy shampoos

Exhibit C: cafe food

Re:Focus on content, not protecting crap

[anthony_dipierro]

Your examples aren't very good. Bottled water, fancy shampoos, and cafe food, none of these things can be obtained for free.

Re:Focus on content, not protecting crap

[drsmithy]

Your examples aren't very good. Bottled water, fancy shampoos, and cafe food, none of these things can be obtained for free.

Water certainly can (or, at least, at a cost with the same principle that downloading stuff "for free" still costs for the internet connection).

The other two examples are there to show how people are quite happy to pay more if they perceive a need, or for convenience.

In other words, with the proper marketing and/or level of convenience, people will pay $X for something, even if they could acquire another product with vanishingly few differences for some amount less than X. The doom and gloom rhetoric of P2P killing "art" conveniently ignores the massive body of historical evidence contradicting its premise.

Re:Focus on content, not protecting crap

[anthony_dipierro]

Water certainly can (or, at least, at a cost with the same principle that downloading stuff "for free" still costs for the internet connection).

Bottled spring water certainly can't.

The other two examples are there to show how people are quite happy to pay more if they perceive a need, or for convenience.

Sure, if they can't obtain the thing for free with the same convenience. You still haven't explained why people are going to pay for movies when they can download and watch them for free. Right now we can't, at least, it is very inconvenient to do so. But it's obviously going to get easier and easier unless there are some serious changes to the copy protection or legal protection of DVDs.

In other words, with the proper marketing and/or level of convenience, people will pay $X for something, even if they could acquire another product with vanishingly few differences for some amount less than X.

It'd take some magic marketing to sell something that can be downloaded for free and make a profit. You just couldn't do it.

The doom and gloom rhetoric of P2P killing "art" conveniently ignores the massive body of historical evidence contradicting its premise.

Whoa now, hold on a second. I never said P2P would kill "art". I said that if left unchecked it'll kill most of the profits in making DVDs. We'll probably never know, because the government and the industry are fighting hard to stop copyright infringement. But to think otherwise ignores all the evidence. The vast majority of people don't pay for Linux, after all, and those who do pay for it generally don't pay the developers. So yeah, P2P would never kill art. It'll probably eventually kill the blockbuster (unless we turn into a police state), but it won't kill the independent film. But you were speaking to the the motion picture companies, and their motive isn't solely to "protect art". Their motivation is to protect their profits, and simply "making the content worthwhile" doesn't do that. Again, just look at how much all those people who make Linux worthwhile make.

We'll still have film, because there are intangible benefits to making a film, but corporate shareholders don't benefit very much from these intangible benefits (maybe if the films get infused with product placement, or something, but the days of the blockbuster are numbered).

Re:Focus on content, not protecting crap

[drsmithy]

Bottled spring water certainly can't.

Water is water - that's the point. People are happy to pay for bottled water, despite it not being meaningfully different from the stuff they get for "free" out of the tap. The difference is in their minds, created by an almost incomprehensively successful marketing campaign.

The success of bottled water is truly a triumph of marketing over common sense. Coke has _nothing_ on the guys that can sell people bottles of stuff they can get basically for free out of their taps.

Sure, if they can't obtain the thing for free with the same convenience. You still haven't explained why people are going to pay for movies when they can download and watch them for free.

Easy - simply make them think paying for it is worth it, or make the cost less than the perceived "hassle cost" of doing it free. Again, I point back to my examples where marketing has achieved this quite admirably.

People *will* pay for things they can get free or much cheaper if you can make them think it's worth it, make them think they look "cool" doing it, or if that cost is low enough that the hassle of trying to obtain the same thing for free simply isn't justified.

Right now we can't, at least, it is very inconvenient to do so. But it's obviously going to get easier and easier unless there are some serious changes to the copy protection or legal protection of DVDs.

Not really. In case you hadn't noticed, a rather large proportion of society now has an incredibly low tolerance for "hassle", an even greater urge to "keep up with the Jones's" and substantial disposable incomes (for a better example of this, it's hard to go past Sunbeam's dedicated *egg boiler* appliance, or the mere *existance* of plastic surgery for pets).

To put it bluntly, a rather large chunk of the western world at the moment has more money than it knows what to do with - and you're saying they won't spend a few bucks going out to the movies ?

If people can grab the latest film from a legit source for a price they consider reasonable, most of them will do that rather than trying to find it somewhere for free.

Again, the historical anecdotal evidence for these behaviour patterns is *staggering*. As always, I find it mystifying anyone would argue otherwise in the face of it.

Whoa now, hold on a second. I never said P2P would kill "art". I said that if left unchecked it'll kill most of the profits in making DVDs.

This is a matter of semantics. The principle argument being made (your variation being but one of many) is that "P2P" will make it impossible to make money from films, music, books, etc.

The vast majority of people don't pay for Linux, after all, and those who do pay for it generally don't pay the developers.

Not a good example - nobody[0] *wants* Linux.

So yeah, P2P would never kill art. It'll probably eventually kill the blockbuster (unless we turn into a police state), but it won't kill the independent film.

Of course it won't. It might eat into profit margins somewhat, but people will still be more than happy to go to the movies for a night out, a date, or just to get that experience most of them can't replicate at home.

Again, just look at how much all those people who make Linux worthwhile make.

Many would argue Linux *isn't* worthwhile yet for most things. I certainly wouldn't pay for it (as a general case - we buy RHEL licenses because doing so *does* have sufficient benefits - Oracle support).

We'll still have film, because there are intangible benefits to making a film, but corporate shareholders don't benefit very much from these intangible benefits (maybe if the films get infused with product placement, or something, but the days of the blockbuster are numbered).

Ironically, while you're still pushing the line that "free downloads" will make (large scale) movie creation completely unviable you've just mentioned at

Re:Focus on content, not protecting crap

[anthony_dipierro]

Water is water - that's the point.

What is that supposed to mean? Bottled spring water is not the same as tap water (not to mention that tap water isn't free).

People are happy to pay for bottled water, despite it not being meaningfully different from the stuff they get for "free" out of the tap.

You must live somewhere with quality tap water. Believe me when I tell you that the quality of tap water is pretty damn bad in many parts of the country. And you can't carry water around in your hands if you're working outside or otherwise not near a tap.

Easy - simply make them think paying for it is worth it, or make the cost less than the perceived "hassle cost" of doing it free.

Oh, I see. Easy. LOL.

Again, I point back to my examples where marketing has achieved this quite admirably.

And I reiterate my statement that your examples sucked. Besides this, marketing isn't free. You're suggesting that the movie companies lower prices and increase costs and that they're going to somehow magically make money this way.

In case you hadn't noticed, a rather large proportion of society now has an incredibly low tolerance for "hassle", an even greater urge to "keep up with the Jones's" and substantial disposable incomes (for a better example of this, it's hard to go past Sunbeam's dedicated *egg boiler* appliance, or the mere *existance* of plastic surgery for pets).

Oh don't get me wrong, there will still be people who will pay to watch movies. But whether you want to call that portion of the population "large" or "small" it's still only a fraction of the people who currently pay to watch movies.

Whoa now, hold on a second. I never said P2P would kill "art". I said that if left unchecked it'll kill most of the profits in making DVDs.

This is a matter of semantics. The principle argument being made (your variation being but one of many) is that "P2P" will make it impossible to make money from films, music, books, etc.

I'm certainly arguing that it'll cut down those profits dramatically, if left unchecked. Anyone with a high school knowledge of supply and demand can see that. The only real variable is whether or not P2P will be left unchecked; how many laws will we have, how strictly will those laws be enforced, and what kind of technical barriers will the content distributors be able to put on the content to inhibit copyright infringement. To the extent that P2P provides a cheaper and more viable substitute, demand for the product will decrease.

Not a good example - nobody[0] *wants* Linux.

That would only argue my point further. In case you didn't understand, I was explaining why killing the *profit* in arts won't kill the arts themselves.

It might eat into profit margins somewhat, but people will still be more than happy to go to the movies for a night out, a date, or just to get that experience most of them can't replicate at home.

You're forgetting that the initial costs for blockbuster films is extemely high compared to the marginal costs. It costs $X to make the film, and if you don't have enough people willing to pay for the film, then you won't make a profit. For small independent films this is much less pronounced. And remember, most big budget films already cost more money to make than they make in profits from the theatre release. Movie companies are already reliant on DVD and video sales.

Many would argue Linux *isn't* worthwhile yet for most things.

Most things? What set of things are we talking about here? Linux is certainly worthwhile for some things. That's why people use it, after all.

Ironically, while you're still pushing the line that "free downloads" will make (large scale) movie creation completely unviable you've just mentioned at least one alternative revenue stream movie makers could tap - product placement.

It's not ironic at all. I admit that there are some possible revenue streams for movie makers even in a world without any copyright laws at all. But I seriously doubt you're going to pay for a $100 million movie with product placements.

Re:Focus on content, not protecting crap

[drsmithy]

What is that supposed to mean?

That people are paying for stuff they could get "free".

Bottled spring water is not the same as tap water [...]

It is in every comparison I've ever seen done (assuming a place with at least somewhat modern infrastructure).

(not to mention that tap water isn't free).

It's as "free" as the bandwidth "downloading stuff" is.

You must live somewhere with quality tap water. Believe me when I tell you that the quality of tap water is pretty damn bad in many parts of the country.

I've yet to visit any remotely civilised area that had undrinkable tap water, or water that was dangerous. Certainly, I've visited many places where the water was somewhat distasteful, but a movie you download off a website usually doesn't look or sound as good as one you see in the cinema, either.

And you can't carry water around in your hands if you're working outside or otherwise not near a tap.

Your attempts to try and score a point are getting ridiculous....

So, you see, you go and grab and *empty bottle* or maybe a *canteen* and fill it up at the tap before you go outside.

The point here is that people are *happily* paying for stuff (water) they can get for "free" - something you insist could never happen.

Oh, I see. Easy. LOL.

If it can be done with _water_, for fuck's sake, it can be done with anything.

You also dismiss out of hand the basis of every single successful marketing campaign ever - *including* the ones that would have gotten people out seeing movies and buying music in the first place - make things attractive enough so that people will spend money on them. Every day I am astounded at people's willingness to pay - often subsantially more than they need to - for something when they could get that same thing (or a 99% as good substitute) for much, much less. Yet for some reason you think this behaviour, that has been consistent for - conservatively - thousands of years, will be changed by "the internet" ?

And I reiterate my statement that your examples sucked.

Your whole argument sucks, but at least I'm trying to make a discussion out of it.

Besides this, marketing isn't free. You're suggesting that the movie companies lower prices and increase costs and that they're going to somehow magically make money this way.

There's nothing "magic" about it. Movie companies aren't exactly running on razor thin margins (yet another indicator the system needs a shakeup).

You seem to be infected with the same ridiculous logic that the RIAA and friends are, where "less profits" == "losing money", ie: "not getting something you might have had" == "loss". Sorry, but this is patently false. Less profits means you aren't making *as much* money, it doesn't mean you're *losing* money.

Technology has moved on, and certain business models have subsequently been obseleted (again). We don't cry for the buggy whip manufacturers or ice cart haulers anymore, either.

Oh don't get me wrong, there will still be people who will pay to watch movies. But whether you want to call that portion of the population "large" or "small" it's still only a fraction of the people who currently pay to watch movies.

And you base this assertion on what, exactly ?

To the extent that P2P provides a cheaper and more viable substitute, demand for the product will decrease.

Right. So why not just make the non-P2P product more attractive ? I mean, if people will pay $2 for a bottle of water that cost maybe 10c to make, and $15 for a meal that cost maybe $5 to make, what makes you think they won't pay $5 for a movie that might cost them $2 in bandwidth charges and inconvenience ?

You're forgetting that the initial costs for blockbuster films is extemely high compared to the marginal costs. It costs $X to make the film, and if you don't have enough people willing to pay for the f

Re:Focus on content, not protecting crap

[anthony_dipierro]

Bottled spring water is not the same as tap water [...]

It is in every comparison I've ever seen done (assuming a place with at least somewhat modern infrastructure).

I live in Tampa, Florida, and bottled water doesn't even taste the same as the recycled crap that we get from our taps. So I guess we don't have a modern infrastructure here. Of course, this is besides the obvious difference that tap water doesn't come in a bottle.

I've yet to visit any remotely civilised area that had undrinkable tap water, or water that was dangerous.

I never said it was undrinkable or dangerous.

Certainly, I've visited many places where the water was somewhat distasteful, but a movie you download off a website usually doesn't look or sound as good as one you see in the cinema, either.

P2P doesn't directly threaten sales in the cinema, it threatens sales on DVD, which is potentially identical depending how much you're willing to spend on the P2P (and these prices come down every day, and if not stopped piracy using this method will get much easier as well).

So, you see, you go and grab and *empty bottle* or maybe a *canteen* and fill it up at the tap before you go outside.

And these empty bottles or canteens, they're free too?

The point here is that people are *happily* paying for stuff (water) they can get for "free" - something you insist could never happen.

No they're naively paying for stuff stuff that they could get a little bit cheaper with a certain amount of work and inconvenience.

You seem to be infected with the same ridiculous logic that the RIAA and friends are, where "less profits" == "losing money", ie: "not getting something you might have had" == "loss".

Most of the MPAA directors (let's not change the topic just yet) are stockholders in the member companies, so "less profits" does == "losing money", in a very real sense.

Less profits means you aren't making *as much* money, it doesn't mean you're *losing* money.

But now at least you're admitting what you're asking the MPAA to "focus on content" rather than "protecting crap", you're asking them to take a cut in their profits. It's clearly an irrational thing for them to do. Sure, if they could snap their fingers and produce better content they'd do it (and unlike your original suggestion, that would increase piracy, not reduce it). But in addition to creating better content, they have to work on stopping piracy, because if they just sat back and did nothing, we'd already have stopped buying DVDs. In fact, considering that the MPAA != the member movie companies, stopping piracy is and should be their main concern. Let the movie companies themselves focus on quality. For the most part, differences in quality aren't going to do anything but shift viewers from one movie company to the other anyway. The MPAA needs to focus on the broad concerns affecting the entire industry, and copyright infringement is number one. Without laws against copyright infringement, enforced both technically and legally, the member companies would quickly go out of business. As time progresses and P2P technologies get better, the technical and legal enforcement of the laws needs to get better and better in order to maintain the same level of profits. In fact, you seem to admit this yourself.

Oh don't get me wrong, there will still be people who will pay to watch movies. But whether you want to call that portion of the population "large" or "small" it's still only a fraction of the people who currently pay to watch movies.

And you base this assertion on what, exactly ?

Based on the fact that I personally won't pay to watch movies if I can easily download the movie for free. Therefore the portion isn't 1, so it's only a fraction.

To the extent that P2P provides a cheaper and more viable substitute, demand

Network authorization - no way

[Animats]

Actually, the RFID aspect of this is incidental. What they're really talking about is requiring network authorization to play a disk. The MPAA can fantasize about that, but it's not going to happen. Not in a world where DVD players cost $29.95.

Imagine Xmas morning, when the authentication servers are overloaded, it takes hours to get a new disk authorized, and new DVD players won't play old disks until you contact the call center for an upgrade authorization.

Re:Network authorization - no way

[TheStupidOne]

Imagine Xmas morning, when the authentication servers are overloaded, it takes hours to get a new disk authorized, and new DVD players won't play old disks until you contact the call center for an upgrade authorization.

That's exactly what turned people away from digital content services like Steam. For those who bought Half-Life 2 in a box rather than off Steam, they were screwed for a few days becuase the authentication servers were overloaded and you couldn't play with-out Steam activation. That was probably the biggest driving force behind the whole steam hacking scene. The fact that people couldn't play a single-player game they have in their hand and payed for.

Companies are slow to realize that authentication-based systems don't work. There will always be a time when the servers are down or overloaded. There will always be that one customer who doesn't have internet access for one reason or another.

And what's possibly the worst reason why to have an authentication system, is that it assumes the buyer is a pirate until "verified". Why should I have to prove to the *AA that my purchase of "Scum Buster 5" or "Britney Spears Greatest Hits 11" was legit? Why should anyone else have to know, let alone a massive media giant, my purchasing patterns? Systems that require one to verify their purchase don't work, are bound to fail miserably, and are a huge threat to privacy

Now rather than having the DVD player authenticate, why can't we just have the disc activated at the Point of Sale like phone cards and such? Rather than having the DVD player call home everytime you watch it, why don't you just have the disc be inert until activated at the register when you purchase it? Have the registers have a special burner that burns the auth key onto a special region of the disc, and then have the player decrypt the stream when it plays it.

This has two boons. The *AA gets to make sure your purchase was legit, so that shoplifters and such can't just pilfer discs and pirate them. And it puts piraters at bay, because they can't just fake an auth/decrypt key.

Obviously it's too late to tag this onto DVD players now, considering how much it would break the legacy players, but have this integrated into Bluray/HD-DVD, when the quality of the content will actually rival theater quality.

And yes, I know any encryption/auth scheme will be cracked and such, but the only effective way to battle piracy is to make it so difficult to defeat, yet without hindering the consumer or making it difficult/expensive.

Although it's not my preferred souliton, it works a lot better than this proposed one. My preferred solution is to offer free downloads of movies, but in very reduced quality. The only reason I watch pirates is to gague a movie before I see it. With ticket prices in excess of $15 for new releases, word of mouth from basically paid advertisers disguised as impartial reviewers isn't going to cut it.

Of the three movies I've payed for this year, one of them I made my choice because of the pirates. I was iffy about Sin City, but after watching the horrible-quality pirates and loving it, I payed for a chance to see it in a movie theater.

They want you to pay twice

[Anonymous Coward]

You pay $8 per person to watch in the theater. Then you pay $18 to buy the disk.

Hope that explains things.

You're welcome.

Re:Pr0n==cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

Well those kiddie luring rides aren't cheap you know.

Control

[Renraku]

This is more about control over things they've already sold than about stopping piracy.

Just think. Now there's nothing stopping Lucas Films from releasing 20 copies of the same movie, and FORCING you to buy them all if you want to continue to be able to watch it.

Are you kidding?

[/dev/trash]

Everyone knows that the Feds funded fahrenheit 911.

Slight adjustment of summary

[noidentity]

[...] The group is researching a method of using RFID as a tool for digital restrictions management (DRM), wherein technologies are employed to protect media file companies from lost sales due to unauthorized use.

After all, the media files themselves don't need protection, since most people who download a whole movie are going to be careful not to corrupt or damage it.

Re:Pr0n==cheap

[HermanAB]

Animation is even cheaper. Now you only have to pay some geeks pizza and coke to make a movie. Eventually, animation will be so realistic, that warm blood actors and actresses will be obsolete.

This won't take off...

[dfm3]

I can't see the film industry or consumers going for this. As the article states, this technology would be used to produce DVDs that can be played at home as soon as the movie is released in theaters. Sounds nice, but the MPAA makes money off of movies twice- once when it is released in theaters and again several months later when it is released on DVD. Their hope is that the same person who went out and already paid to see the film on screen will buy a copy once it comes out on disc, effectively paying twice to have access to the same content. One person will chose to watch the movie in the theater, while somebody else might choose to watch it in the comfort of their home at the same time, but very few people will watch it both in the theater and in their home if they have a choice the day the movie is released. This is one reason why movies aren't released on DVD for several months after they hit theaters.

Plus, who in their right mind would buy another DVD player just to play a few heavily DRMmed movies that you can't watch without first connecting to the internet? I'd rather wait a few months and get a copy that I can watch when I want to, without having to rely on an external server (that may not always be available for various reasons) to verify that I own a legal copy of the movie.

Re:This won't take off...

[l810c]

I was browsing for this post before I made it myself. This article from 'RFID Journal' is complete bunk.

There is actually a 4-Tier income stream from Movies:
Theater->Rental->PPV->TV

This is done for a reason. As stated in the parent, they are not going to release a movie on DVD at the same time it is released in theaters regardless of some fancy RFID encryption. When we go to the theater we pay ~$7.50 or more Each Person. There is no way to control how many people view a DVD release, even on one fancy RFID enabled player.

Consider you buy one of these fancy DVD players and SW3 has just released. You could pay $10(high) for the RFID enabled DVD and have a party with 30 of your friends to watch the new movie at your house the day of it's release. .33/person. 30 people would generate $225(@7.50 each) at the theater.

Not going to happen!

Re:This won't take off...

[pagz]

Man I never really bought the whole average /. user is a loner thing but instead of thinking the MPAA just wants to get one person to pay twice how about this:

When I go to the movies I go with my friends...I don't recall a single movie that I've seen in the cinima that I haven't been with atleast one other person. So let's do some basic econ, at the cinima they sell tickets. At the store they sell DVD's. Sales for the cinima is tickets * n, while sales at the store are DVDs * n, where n is the number of people buying.

Now here's the wild part...if they release the DVD at the same time as the cinima you can split the cost of the DVD with your friends by watching it in your living room and not have everyone pay 10 to see it! This is the reason they don't release it at the same time, they can either make money on a group of people shelling out 10 per ticket or they can make 20 on one DVD!

Re:This won't take off...

[Anonymous Coward]

The 'A' type segment that will pony up the $$$ for a new crippled video player, plus the hasssle of locating a spare phone jack - that will pay top dollar - are few are far between.

The move industry should try this model: People register for a special factory encrypted disk, which is posted out, or made downloadable - emphasis on unique.

Then people reverse bid, what they are prepared to pay for the key and when. Eventually consumer gets an email saying bid accepted + instruction how to burn a usable copy, price falling daily. Other variables, like movie ticket reciept number for same movie, can drive down the waiting period.

Get real - if joe only offers $1, chances are the movie is crap, or $1 is better than nothing relative to a Blockbuster DVD residual. Plus it drives down piracy, while pushing box sales up.

They could stop most piracy...assassination.

[Anonymous Coward]

"If they just stopped trying to ruin the product, and get it out faster than pirates."

Of course to this day. No one has ever answered the question. Which came first? The pirate, or the DRM?

Implementation Realities

[mpapet]

As enticing as it may sound to the movie studios, they would have a whole bunch of trust and cost issues:

1. A contactless crypto microprocessor smart card would set an OEM back likely $25/card for small quantities. If they want security printing, add another $20.

2. Who are you going to trust to issue the cards?

3. What happens when the DRM is cracked? Do I hand in my card for another? Talk about a logistics and cost-sink nightmare....

4. DVD player manufacturers won't like it either. The basic idea being, you want me to add a DRM engine to my already tiny-margin product?????

5. Unless the DVD standards companies get behind it, it's a good intellectual exercise.

Geek Bait.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Throw enough flashy new features in a player, and the public will run over each to get their hands on it; DRM and all."

Sure THEY will

Re:Pr0n==cheap

[Eq 7-2521]

"...relying on scripts and directors and the like..."

You mean like the porn industry does?

DRM underwear?

[No Such Agency]

Fruit-of-the-Loom wants you to buy new underwear, so, they turn off the authentication for your year old undies. Now, your washing machine will not run with these undies present.

A true hacker would take a brute force approach and wash his or her undies by hand.

Re:DRM underwear?

[Kaenneth]

I think many of them would boycott undie washing altogether; as if it would make a differance.

Re:DRM underwear?

[jeffkjo1]

A true hacker would take a brute force approach and wash his or her undies by hand.

Of course, this would be made illegal under the DMUA (Digital Millenium Underwear Act.) No analog holes here.

Is it just me?

[Henk Postma]

... or is this just a when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail kind of situation?

Re:Pr0n==cheap

[Secret Agent X23]

This is very true. I never understood why, rationally speaking, should a movie star (or a pop singer, a soccer player etc) get such ridiculous money. Is it how much their contribution to society really worth? I very much doubt it.

The real question is, how much is someone's work worth, in purely economic terms, to the person writing the check? If I were a producer and thought that Brad Pitt's name on my movie would be worth an extra $50 million in revenues, I'd be happy to write him a check for $10 million (numbers are pulled out of the air; I don't know what Pitt typically gets paid).

Yes, the $35,000-a-year teachers who teach kids to read are making a far greater contribution to society, but the fact is, their jobs aren't generating any "cash flow."

easy to break

[Henk Postma]

So I made this DVD myself that I want to play on my fancy new RFID enabled DVD player. There must be some legacy mode on the player that allows me to play it right?

Now how about just frying the RFID chip on the DVD, voila: it looks like a regular DVD

Re:easy to break

[NetNifty]

"Now how about just frying the RFID chip on the DVD, voila: it looks like a regular DVD "

Unless they're amazingly stupid, that won't work. The DVD player will say "hey this is encrypted, I need the key" then look for the RFID tag with the key on it, if the key can't be read from the RFID it can't decrypt it and therefore can't play it.

Re:easy to break

[argent]

Now how about just frying the RFID chip on the DVD

Congratulations, now you no longer have a key to decode the DVD.

Potential revenue?

[bezuwork's friend]

The Motion Picture Association of America, a trade group that represents major Hollywood studios, estimates that the U.S. motion picture industry loses more than $3 billion annually in potential worldwide revenue due to piracy.

Scratches head ...

Hey, I can play that game too ...

I lose more than $10K every year in potential revenue just because I didn't get that raise ...
I lose more than $1M every year in potential revenue because I wasn't selected to be CEO for any of several Fortune 500 companies ...
I lose more than $10B every year in potential revenues because BG doen't give me it ...

Re:Pr0n==cheap

[Justin205]

Bad analogy. If you pay that $1000 for the litter, at least the rest of the litter will be cleaned up.

For a movie star, if one gets $0.10, and the other gets $1000, then it's not even split up. The one with $1000 gets the (almost full - minus agents, etc.) $1000, and the one with $0.10 is stuck with $0.10.

Re:Pr0n==cheap

[The_egghead]

I call foul! To those of us who aren't gay, 'MJ' will always be reserved for number 23. Call him Jacko or 'has-been sick fuck popstar', anything but MJ.

Re:Pr0n==cheap

[shutdown -p now]

I'm not sure about the country you live in but in most of the world the amount of money someone gets paid isn't a measure of the worth of their contribution to society

I know; not in capitalist society, at least. And that leads us to the next question...

... nor is it meant to be.

Why not?

Re:Pr0n==cheap

[Narchie Troll]

Not direct cash flow, that is.

Remove public education, and you'll see just how much cash flow teachers are responsible as American industry finishes going down the tubes.

Re:Pr0n==cheap

[oldwolf13]

it's a catch-22 system.

If we pay the movie star less, where does the rest go? To the producer? Director? Company? They're not going to do something nice, and responsible and maybe make it so joe sixpack and his family can go see a movie without being gouged.

Personally, I think a lot of those people should be paid less, and let the money trickle down more to the lowest paid. if they're making sufficient funds, then they can maybe do things like make it so I don't have to spend $50 or so to go see a movie with my girl.

This is what gets me with movie stars, singers, HOCKEY PLAYERS... sure they thank their fans.. say they owe it all to them... yet their hands are in our wallets every chance they get.

Out here in Vancouver, Canada, they did some awful things to the projectionists... rolling back wages, lessening the staff... etc. They ended up striking. Now projectionists made GOOD money, so I met a lot of people who thought they were overpaid anyways, so they should just take what they could get... they figured it was such an easy job they shouldn't be paid what they were.

i find this way of thinking to be very similar to brainwashing. Instead of wishing the poor projectionist and his family to be paid less, they should be wishing themselves to be PAID MORE. Why do people always have to drag others down, instead of trying to boost themselves up?

I asked them where the money should go if they succeeded in doing this to the projectists. Back to Sony and their ilk so they can have yet another dump truck full of money sitting around collecting interest?

I'd much rather my money went to some poor joe sixpack with a wife and kids busting his ass to support them, then to some already stinking rich guy.

Re:Pr0n==cheap

[oldwolf13]

I hate to reply to myself, but figured I'd add that when the movie theatres did this to the projectionists, they were already making incredible ammounts of money... this wasn't a neccesity due to poor returns... it was pure SICK GREED.

Re:Pr0n==cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

what tubes?

Re:And if you're watching "Fahrenheit 911" on DVD.

[Queer Boy]

That's not funny, you know that certain books are actually flagged if bought or borrowed from the library. Who is to say that certain movies will not be the same way when it is easier to flag them with something like this?

This is stupid, so stupid

[Urusai]

If you embed data in the RFID tag, you might as well embed it on the DVD as regular data, since neither are "smart" data sources. This is just another stupid "let's jam this square peg in every damn hole" gimmick. RFID is nothing more than a bar code that is readable over short distances. How about we put RFID tags in our clothes, and a reader in our dresser, so it can tell us what to wear and what matches. HALLE-FREAKIN-LUJAH technology has SAVED US ALL!!!!!!!!!! pardon my enebriationalismz.

Two evil tastes that taste evil together!

[Atario]

Hey, you got your RFID in my DRM!

You got your DRM in my RFID!

You forgot two words

[patio11]

"If they were to release DVD for free videos at the time they premier in theatres they would stop camera piracy, and the motive for most casual pirates."

Hmm... doesn't sound like a viable business plan, that. Especially since the DVD costs strictly more than going to the theatre anyhow, unless you're habitually taking more than 3 people or so (or live in a wacked out market like Japan where theatre tickets start at $15 for high school students and top-flight-non-collector DVDs are "only" $30).

Re:Pr0n==cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

"Instead of wishing the poor projectionist and his family to be paid less, they should be wishing themselves to be PAID MORE."

You missed their sentiment. It's not that they wish harm on the projectionists, it's that they don't want a bunch of assholes wanting more money keeping them from watching movies.

See, nobody gets as much money as they want. To get more money, people struggle and train for jobs where the skills are rarer and harder to develop, so they can fairly draw a higher salary which develops naturally from the process of bidding for labor. Other people form unions so they can unfairly squeeze a higher paycheck and better job security by removing other workers from employers' pool of options and threatening to abuse their positions of responsibility, violate the principles of their work contract, and go on strike.

When you've got a job as easy and comfortable as a projectionist's, you have to expect that some capable person will be willing to do it for very little money. Maybe a student, retiree, or person who is between "real" jobs.

But, no, rather than struggle and toil for their fair wage, the projectionists would rather disrupt normal operations of business to extort a high-wage hand-out for their cushy jobs.

Honest, hard-working people have even less sympathy for that way of making money than idle rent-collecting.

Are you quite sure?

[iamacat]

My parents would definitely do a better job teaching me than my school did (this is "in Soviet Russia", but I heard American schools are similar). They would know which subjects I am most able to learn and use in my future life and what to keep to absolute minimum. More importantly, I would get to hang around with decent children, not drug-addicated bullies.

On the other hand, only about 10% of population really has jobs that require any scientific knowledge. Even programmers only need a rudimentary knowledge of math. The rest would do just as well by just learning to read and looking at a few popular books to cover basic issues in health, money management, social interaction and politics.

I recall that public education was introduced to combat unemployment by keeping children out of job market. And nowadays it's mostly promoted to keep teenagers out of gangs and other trouble. Still, there is got to be a better way than making them do meaningless drivel.

Re:Are you quite sure?

[Narchie Troll]

"drug-addicated (sic) bullies"

This points out the flaw in your reasoning -- many children cannot be adequately educated by their parents. Their parents may be absent, uninterested, or abusive. They may not be able to teach their children due to working excessive hours.

The relative failure of the current educational system is not a reason to destroy it entirely. We need better-educated children, not worse.

Re:Pr0n==cheap

[westlake]

If Hollywood would stop using celebrity actors and actresses to sell movies, instead relying on scripts and directors and the like, I think they would save a lot of money.

since the silent era, starpower has been something you could take to the bank. try imagining "White Heat" with anyone but Jimmy Cagney as Cody Jarett

That's not how the goose story went.

[Anonymous Coward]

The woodcutter's greedy wife decided to kill the goose to get the eggs out, and she got a few eggs, although smaller than each full-grown egg.

She got about 3 times as much gold that day, and never another golden egg again.

There's a bit more of a moral to that than your version.

The real question is

[jonwil]

Does the DRM that is being applied to movies, music, computer software etc actually result in more profits? (remember that you need to take into account the cost of the DRM)

Re:The real question is

[DerekJ212]

The key difference here is Steam has content thats worthwhile and people want. I am amazed they didnt take more flak for switching to such a system, but in use once it is authenticated, you can unlock the program for offline use and HL2 is already being passed around, so even that didnt work too well...DRM is pointless people, geeks make it, and geeks can unmake it.

Re:Pr0n==cheap

[oldwolf13]

they didn't want more money, in fact they would even agree to a slight rollback. They just wanted their JOBS.

The company was the ones stopping people from watching the movies because they wanted more money... they forced the strike, it was either that or just empty their lockers and go home.

The projectionists did their job, and did it well.. it wasn't the ol' "4 guys with shovels... 3 of them watching the other guy work."

Now unions have their problems, I agree... but workers do need to stick together or the companies will just walk all over them. Companies abuse their positions of power far more often then unions do.

As for them being paid well... well there's tonnes of jobs out there where they will pay you nothing, let you break your back working for them, and fire you in a second. hell instead of thinking they should be paid less, we should be think that the minimum wage is bloody ridiculous. They should raise it to like $15.00 or so, so that people can earn a decent living.

Of course, greed would kick in again, and inflation would drive everything up.

some guys making a few bucks an hour extra is really a small problem. The real issues is why we let these greedy sick bastards make more money then they can ever use in their lifetime, but continue to suck in more, at the expense of anyone and everything in their way.

i've said it before, I'll say it again, capitalism needs to be reigned in, and i guess we'd also have to force morality into the system.

yeah, hah, they "forced" the strike

[Anonymous Coward]

they didn't want more money, in fact they would even agree to a slight rollback. They just wanted their JOBS.

They just wanted to KEEP THEIR RIDICULOUS SALARIES despite having some of the easiest work on the planet.

The company was the ones stopping people from watching the movies because they wanted more money... they forced the strike, it was either that or just empty their lockers and go home.

hahaha... Yeah, they FORCED the strike. The told the projectionists, "Hey, you'd better disrupt our business and stop us from making money!"

It's obvious that you're a plain socialist, in other words that you think the purpose of jobs is to distribute wages and not to accomplish things at minimum cost, and I'm not going to argue any further with such an idiot.

Re:yeah, hah, they "forced" the strike

[oldwolf13]

what's the matter.. did I hurt your feelings?

Maybe you should take some of those lovely pills the doctor prescribed for you.

Calling me a socialist, now that's a laugh, and shows your ignorance oh-so-clearly.

Keep hiding, little one.. some day maybe you'll grow up enough to be able to have a conversation as an adult without going on a rany, foaming at the mouth, yet too scared to actually use a NICKNAME.

"mommy... an anonymous coward called me an idiot!"

punk.

Re:yeah, hah, they "forced" the strike

[shutdown -p now]

It's obvious that you're a plain socialist, in other words that you think the purpose of jobs is to distribute wages and not to accomplish things at minimum cost

I don't understand where you've got that ridiculous idea from. I'm not a socialist myself, but those whom I've talked to favour socialism precisely because they believe it is able to accomplish things at minimal cost (due to planned economy). While I don't think much of socialism, I have to say that capitalism is definitely not achieving long-term production costs, e.g. better fuck up the environment but get quick buck now - what do we care about what's going to happen in 50 years? - that's where capitalism leads.

Re:yeah, hah, they "forced" the strike

[Anonymous Coward]

No actually capitalism would work in a perfect market because future clean up costs would be factored in.

The problems are caused by market inneficiencies, which are unfortunately inescapable.

The trouble is most economists work on models using certain initial assumptions which change the very system they are emulating.

Re:yeah, hah, they "forced" the strike

[Em Adespoton]

This ignores corporatization -- because individuals are not companies, a company can be incorporated, make money for individuals, and then fold before having to deal with clean up costs. This market leaves room for companies specializing in clean up as it is absolutely required -- and demand for said companies becomes insanely high, raising costs further.

The problem is that any market doesn't factor in all external consequences of all actions within the market.

Re:Pr0n==cheap

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

holywood movies are expensive because theyre adicted to big budgets, actors are adicted to large pays, so they have to spend half the budget of the movie in advertising to make sure enough sreens are showing the movies and that people pay to watch it.

blair witch project was a damn good movie and it was shot with only US$35 thousand and made more than US$200 milion in the box office. OTOH titanic was budgeted in what ? US$ 200 mil ? and made 1 bilion. 5 times the investiment. blair with multiplied the investment by more than 5 THOUSAND times... and blair witch is _good_ movie, titanic is crap...

good movies are not about budget (remember waterworld ?), is about story telling, acting, good and well developed characters. none of these requires a megabucks budget.

Ben Affleck

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you could try imagining Pearl Harbor without Ben Affleck...

Fact is, even the big stars make bad movies that bomb because they suck.

Focus on digital, not protecting analog.

[Anonymous Coward]

Interestingly enough. None of those exhibits can be swiped from the safety of one's basement.

Windows authorization - no way

[Anonymous Coward]

"Imagine Xmas morning, when the authentication servers are overloaded, it takes hours to get a new disk authorized, and new DVD players won't play old disks until you contact the call center for an upgrade authorization."

Not if they use that OSS technology you all are always going on about.

Remember it's always that inferior windows technology that's running out of steam, and going down.

Steam

[Duct Tape Jedi]

In order to authenticate, the player would also need to link to some type of online network, similar to the EPCglobal Network, that would associate the DVD with a legal sale.

Isn't this similar to what Steam does and one of the reasons why people don't like it? What happens if their authentifications servers go down?

All you "movies are expensive" people, tell me...

[achurch]

Why are movies expensive to make? Or rather, why should they be expensive to make? Solve that problem, and Hollywood won't need to worry about pirates either.

(Yes, this is a rhetorical question.)

Pr0n example-A chance affair.

[Anonymous Coward]

"With digital photography, the costs to make a movie are going down dramatically. The top actors might not be willing to take a pay cut, but there are plenty of excellent actors that would work for less than $10 million."*

Translation: Take a chance on them.

Funny how when the music industry tries something like that. They get lambasted by slashdotters.

*Substitute "desperate IT worker" for "actor" and you have the present situation. Some will even work for "love".

Re:Pr0n example-A chance affair.

[anthony_dipierro]

Translation: Take a chance on them.

Funny how when the music industry tries something like that. They get lambasted by slashdotters.

Who go out and buy their products in hoardes anyway? Getting lambasted by Slashdotters doesn't exactly affect the bottom line that much.

Genius? Hmm...

[achurch]

It's a genius idea frankly. something Unique is needed to be part of the the next spec...RFID is the simplest thing to use. mold it right into the disc and the content could be keyed to accept only those numbers of RFID tags as keys. Nobody but certified people could have the RFID discs.

(1) I want to take a home video from my HD-DV camera and put it on an HD disc to give to family and friends. Are you saying I can't do that?

(2A) If you make an exception for (1), what stops me from doing the same with a movie rip?

(2B) If you don't make an exception, just how do you intend to get people to accept the format?

I don't like the "phone home" requirements though, that could be a real turn off for most people.

(3) Have you ever heard of DIVX (not the video codec, but the DRM scheme Circuit City came up with about 10 years ago)? More importantly, have these researchers ever heard of it? It would seem not . . .

Re:Genius? Hmm...

[mabhatter654]

frankly, readable-only formats will become the norm soon... how many people really have DVD based cameras and such? It doesn't seem to have hurt Nintendo to use crippled discs versus the rampant piracy of playstation or xbox discs? And all they do is use something simple... spin it backwards! That's the point... they have to do something about piracy at a hardware level.. the shortest & simplest version is to keep the format read only as long as possible.

I'm not a fan of breaking stuff, but with the new HD formats comming they've got a great chance to simply break compatibility. Frankly, combine with a RFID tag I think spinning the disc backwards for "protected" content would be great. I'd hate to cut off PC people, but It's a really simple thing to make HD discs work one way in players and another in PC drives... and totally incompatible from a software/hardware point... something like "backwards" is REALLY easy. It would also allow you to have writers for HD video, but let's face it.. nobody at the top wants you to have writers.. that's their dream all along!

Frankly hardware is so cheap I'd see them simply putting two drives in a machine rather than trying to keep backwards compatibility... after all DVD will still be around for years as a "hole" in the system anyway.

Re:Pr0n==cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you're saying is: All movies should be porn. Right?

Re:Pr0n==cheap

[sasjpu]

The only thing expensive about PIXAR's development process is their salaries and their computers. Not that much different than porn really. Soon everyone's going to be able to make a movie of "pixar quality" on their PC. In fact, most of it can be done now. Incidentally, the example is not a good one because it's not PIXAR driving the pirate issue it's the movie marketeers. They are also the people that make the money. These are people that do nothing other than take someone's work and sell it. When you don't have creativity as insurnace to your revenue stream you have to fight to save your "good thing". Eventually these people will either loose it or re-invent themselves. It happens frequently in the business world. As technology and people's expectations change marketing profit becomes a "slippery fish". It's just unfortunate that our law makers are stuck on tradition. However, I guess it's the nature of the industry. Eventually the laws will become obsolete because they can't keep up. sasjpu

missing

[ArbitraryConstant]

Doesn't SCO get any love?

Re:missing

[Anonymous Coward]

fuck SCO! where's the ob. Simpsons?

ET phone home?

[Nkwe]

From TFA:

In order to authenticate, the player would also need to link to some type of online network

So every time I want to watch a movie my player will phone home and inform someone that I am currently watching a movie?

There will be a record of what and when I watch?

So some time in the future someone else can decide that I don't get to watch the movie I paid for anymore?

If my Internet connection goes down, I can't watch movies instead?

I paid what for these features?

Re:Pr0n==cheap

[shutdown -p now]

If we pay the movie star less, where does the rest go? To the producer? Director? Company?

That's a no-brainer. Off the ticket price, obviously.

It just saddens me to see scientific projects (even in US, not to mention poor countries like e.g. Russia) close because of lack of funds, while some pop star with complete and utter lack of talent makes millions in a few months. Think what you will, there's something fundamentally wrong with it. Either the system's not working as it should, or most people are just too retarded for the system to work properly.

Re:Pr0n==cheap

[benzapp]

Either the system's not working as it should, or most people are just too retarded for the system to work properly.

Its called democracy, and its never worked. The majority of people simply want bread and games, as has been known for thousands of years. We're talking about games in this thread.

Democracy is advocated only by the highly cynical, who believe leaders inherently exploit the people they lead. Yet, as you emphasize, the majority of people need to be lead as their priorities in life are at best trivial and at worst dangerous. Surely, our civilization would collapse if the nihilistic masses who crave nothing but diversion were actually in charge.

Security...

[Kaenneth]

How hard will it be for... ummm, Wal*Mart security to prevent me^H^Hsome evil, vile person from slinking into their shi^H^H^Hwonderful consumer paradise with a handy^H^H^H^H^Htreacherous, nasty, immoral RFID tag zapper?

Re:Pr0n==cheap

[anthony_dipierro]

Apparently you didn't get the analogy. If 9,999 people pay nothing, and one person has to pay $1000, then it's "not even split up".

fight, flight or mutate?

[Anonymous Coward]

mutate people. mutate.

Don't need it, they're already phoning home...

[argent]

Is it just a techinical issue that it is easer to add a unique ID to each disk by gluing on an RFID than to write it to the disk?

That, and it's harder for Joe Schmoe to create an RFID-equipped disk in his laptop. But the real protection is having the disk "phone home". And they've already started doing that.

Regarding DRM

[Landak]

I do not think that it's legality has been fully established. While I know that in America you've got all kinds of fun draconian legislature trying to make it so, which is all well and good, but the multinational corps based in your fair land still shove it down everyone else on the planet. Even when it's not always legal - and usually isn't. I'm British, 16, and this is from the 2003 Copyright and Related Rights Regulations Act:

296ZE Remedy where effective technological measures prevent permitted acts (1) In this section - "permitted act" means an act which may be done in relation to copyright works, notwithstanding the subsistence of copyright, by virtue of a provision of this Act listed in Part 1 of Schedule 5A; "voluntary measure or agreement" means - (a) any measure taken voluntarily by a copyright owner, his exclusive licensee or a person issuing copies of, or communicating to the public, a work other than a computer program, or (b) any agreement between a copyright owner, his exclusive licensee or a person issuing copies of, or communicating to the public, a work other than a computer program and another party, the effect of which is to enable a person to carry out a permitted act. (2) Where the application of any effective technological measure to a copyright work other than a computer program prevents a person from carrying out a permitted act in relation to that work then that person or a person being a representative of a class of persons prevented from carrying out a permitted act may issue a notice of complaint to the Secretary of State. [It then gets very long winded about how the Secretary of State can obligate the copyright holder to comply.]

Additionally, while I'm at it, on hex editing: M$ Eula:

You may not use access to the Service to obtain information necessary for you to design, develop or update unauthorized software that you use or provide to others to use to access the Service. [...] You will not disassemble, decompile, or reverse engineer the Software. All Software is protected by copyright laws and international treaty provisions

Look at Section 15, Part 1 of the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations Act, 2003 which states that:

"(1) It is not an infringement of copyright for a lawful user of a copy of a computer program to observe, study or test the functioning of the program in order to determine the ideas and principles which underlie any element of the program if he does so while performing any of the acts of loading, displaying, running, transmitting or storing the program which he is entitled to do. (2) Where an act is permitted under this section, it is irrelevant whether or not there exists any term or condition in an agreement which purports to prohibit or restrict the act (such terms being, by virtue of section 296A, void)."

I just wish someone would try to enforce that over here - music DRM really annoys me. A lot.

Re:Pr0n==cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't matter how good the writing is, some genres require expensive special effects. Most seem to think Lord of the Rings trilogy had pretty good story and acting, but it also had a ton of expensive special effects as well. There was just no way to do a movie like that without expensive sets and cgi. Some movies sure, but certainly not many.

Yeah, right.

[zanderredux]

Maybe the reason the studios are so worried about losses due to piracy is that it might cause them to have to worry about silly things like artistry and solid writing.

Uhhh... Taking this back to the subject of this particular thread, when was the last time I found these on pr0n?

Oh, wait...

:^)

Re:Pr0n==cheap

[Sir dies alot]

Before I even start, I should make it clear, I am a capitalist and I am aware it is not a perfect system. I feel sorry for the projectionists in your story, I really do, but there are several things that seem to have been forgotten in this.

It is indeed a shame that a company fired these poor workers, however their jobs were no longer necessary. Its a sad truth but technology is a double-edged sword, always has been and always will be. On one hand, it makes our lives easier, enriched, and enjoyable, on the other hand technology can do things we as humans can not, and to make things worse they do the things we can do better and cheaper than we can. This has happened throughout human history, advancement in technology makes certain jobs obsolete. It's called progress, as horrible as it is that jow sixpack loses his job, it is inevitable.

As for your idea on raising the minimum wage to $15.00 an hour (which is almost a 200% raise were it done where I am) sounds like a great idea in theory. The only problem that arises is when you attempt to put in practice. Where would this money magically come from? The most common answer to this is from the super-greedy-rich-bastards-with-all-the-money-runn ing-all-the-sick-little-behind-the-scenes-money-ma king-corrupt-businesses. But who decides who is rich enough to give up their money in order to increase the minimum wage? The only real way to establish a fair payment scheme is to make everyone make the exact same amount of money, regardless of job. (BTW this has been tried in the past, it's called communism) The problem with it is that humans are greedy and lazy by nature, and if someone can make the same amount of money for flipping a burger as for performing heart surgery, most humans will choose to flip burgers because it is easier. This has the effect of reducing everyone's productivity and contribution to society to that of the lowest denominator(sp?) of society.

I am by no means saying that capitalism is the true right path, but it does remember that humans require competition and incentive to strive for improvement. Back when we were hunters and gatherers, the incentive was easy, survival. Now with modern technology, survival is easy, so progress is being made based on other incentives, namely money.

Is it the good, morally correct path, probably not. Do you or anyone else have a better idea on how to provide incentive for progress? I'd love to hear it if you do.

Pay per View?

[OreoCookie]

Why do they need special DVD players. If they want to release the movie to home viewers can't they just use cable/satellite pay-per-view?

Hope

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope people will avoid buying these players.
Also, why do manufacturers create products wit DRM?

If for sure would not buy a player with DRM.

Re:Pr0n==cheap

[taboo959]

Out here in Vancouver, Canada, they did some awful things to the projectionists... rolling back wages, lessening the staff... etc. They ended up striking. Now projectionists made GOOD money, so I met a lot of people who thought they were overpaid anyways, so they should just take what they could get... they figured it was such an easy job they shouldn't be paid what they were.

Hmmm. Just a post to add some more information to what you said....

At the time, the projectionists were being paid by the number of screens they were dealing with at the same time. ie If a projectionist was running 7 screens at once, he was paid a higher hourly rate than a projectionist who was running 3 screens.
What that meant was they were making anywhere from $18-$33cdn/hr, with the $33/hr being the one reported in the media. AFAICR, there was 1 projectionist in the province making that much, with most making appx $20. The proposed rollbacks were as much as 60% over 3 years, which brought them back to appx $15/hr.....the same level they were left with after the previous 50% rollback 6 or 7 years (IIRC the time frame) before.

They went on strike, were locked out by the theater chains for more than a year, were denied the right to picket on questionable legal grounds, and finally accepted the rollback rather than have the union go bankrupt.

Because they couldn't picket, and because of the $33/hr reported wage very few people supported them....or even knew the strike was still going a cpl of months into it.

As a side note, this wasn't just a BC issue. The rollback was Canada-wide, but only the BC projectionists were protesting it.....

Sorry if this had a mildly ranty tone, that wasn't intended....but this is still a sore point with me. It's also the reason I haven't been to a movie in a Seagram (owner of Universal Studios and Cineplex) or Viacom (owner of Paramount and Famous Players) owned theater since.....