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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."
I don't see what's in this for the consumer. More DRM, less fair use? Great, sign me up.
"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.
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
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.
--
make install -not war
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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.
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".
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
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.
The following statement is true
The preceding statement is false
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.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
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.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
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"
The following statement is true
The preceding statement is false
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.
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.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
I still think that business should adapt to technology, and not the other way around.
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.
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.
"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.
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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.
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.
If I can't smoke and swear I'm fucked.