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

[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

[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.

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.

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.

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: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.

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: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.

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.

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.

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."

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: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.

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?