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

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: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: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==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.

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.")

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.