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Give Your DVD Player The Finger
sebFlyte writes "Wired is reporting on some scary new DRM tech being developed. From the article: 'At the store, someone buying a new DVD would have to provide a password or some kind of biometric data, like a fingerprint or iris scan, which would be added to the DVD's RFID tag. Then, when the DVD was popped into a specially equipped DVD player, the viewer would be required to re-enter the data.'"
Couple quotes from TFA:
Unfavorable bovine comparisons notwithstanding, these two statements sum up nicely why this will never happen:
Add to all this the increased costs of manufacturing the 'specially equipped DVD players' mentioned in the article, and it's easy to see why this idea is a non-starter.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
such as this will never work. Because people will not buy products with this stuff on it.
I hope.
Meh.
And this is going to "save" how much money at the sake of convenience?
I for one would go back to a VCR before submitting to this. Simply insane to think that I need to be treated like a thief when BUYING something they think I may STEAL later. (making available)
This is nuts.
No keyboard detected. Press any key to continue.
I sometimes think most people are sheep, but still I doubt they will put up with this.
...what you are saying is you want to force another procedure on a wage slave who will, in all likelyhood mess it up royally ( because of being the affore mentioned wage slave ).
Right. You know, I'm all for worrying about my rights, but I think, at least in this, we are being far to paraniod for our own good. And in the process, giving your average walmart worker far too much credit.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
You'd have to keep running back to the DVD player every time they wanted to watch one of the 10,000 Disney and other assorted DVDs that they like to watch endlessly.
This is crazy talk, really, and really prevents the fair use rights we have now (loaning to friends, etc.)
Why don't they just sell tickets every time we want to watch a DVD? "They're $2 cheaper per viewing than going to the theater!"
I, for one, would never purchase a product that required this level of security for my home entertainment. The only time I would consider giving my fingerprint or some other biometric data would be for a HIGH security job.
I don't trust any person at electronics stores with my SS#, why would I trust them with more personal information?"Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats." --Howard Aike
This will be about as desired in the market as the DVDs designed to cloud over in 24 hours after being unsealed, or DIVX.
There's no compelling reason for consumers to agree to even more useless encumberance than we already face with CSS, Macrovision and region coding.
FYI, current generation DVD players are not DRM-less, the DRM is just transparent to most users so they can ignore it. With a system like this, the DRM just becomes obvious to the average Joe. Of course, maybe this is what we finally need to happen to give the average Joe a kick in the ass to be opposed to DRM.
This would screw over libraries. How sick.
Sounds good. Should be at least as popular as DIVX.
It's not a practical technology. If the father purchases a dvd player for the family you can't reasonably expect that he'll be in the house every time somebody want's to play the dvd. I'm sure it's fun to work on such devices but it won't replace the existing systems in any major way.
-Tim Louden
Exactly. Am I supposed to walk up to my DVD and authenticate every time I play a movie? Even if they get this thing on a remote (Which opens up exploits) it's still a pain. I say let them try and impliment this. No one will use their product.
So, if this comes to pass, huge numbers of people will buy the DVD, take it home, enter their fingerprint ONCE, and rip it to a non-protected copy. Then, they'll just use the much-more convenient copy.
In other words, everyone will have and regularly use a DVD copier. And, once you're copying it for yourself, what's the difference if you make a few extra copies? Hey, while I'm sitting here, Aunt Martha might enjoy this movie too.....
Ordinarily, I'm all for free scientific inquiry, but people like this really make me wonder sometimes. Does this kind of guy even think of the consequences to society before he starts assembling a new freedom-defeating device? I worry sometimes that RFID, biometrics, etc. researchers are going to usher in the true Big Brother era mostly through their own shortsightedness in only looking ahead to the next grant or journal article.
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
I doubt it will be used for retail DVDs as it wouldn't be cost-effective.
However, it may yet be useful in securing workprints and pre-release copies. That would decrease bootlegging. A workprint of Star Wars III hit the BitTorrent networks yesterday. You can be sure George is looking to employ this technology when he makes his next Indiana Jones.
Me not having hands, will I be able to buy DVDs in the future?
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
On second thought, I hope the MPAA does this, so a huge class-action lawsuit against the MPAA is filed on behalf of all the people who can't use it. And another class-action suit for all the sellers who loose business because of it. And another by the EFF or whoever on behalf of consumers in general. We could be looking at several billion dollars here, all told.
Free MacMini
There are so many situations where this wouldn't work.
1) What if you have a family?
2) What if you die? (or no more iris)
3) What if you want to sell your DVD?
4) What if you forget your password?
5) What if...
There are millions of "what if" type situations. Also, while my grandmother is trying to figure out how to get the DVD player to work... a million kids will be downloading the movie via the internet.
I wouldn't buy it.
It's time to return to my little library of books, which are light, were cheap, are deeper than DVDs or CDs, and don't accuse me every time I interact with them.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Those are already watermarked. No reason to add an additional (and expensive) level of encumberance. Also, how exactly would they prevent someone simply playing the disk in a player that has no hardware to "honor" the RF tag restriction? We're not talking a new DVD format here, just a boondoggle tacked to the disk.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
They need to make things EASIER and more attractive to the consumer, not less!
If a restrictive, half-baked scheme like this went through, it'd be easier to buy the damn media, and then download a cracked copy off your favorite p2p so you can easily view the movie you paid for on your laptop.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Listen, stories like this are more about selling technology to a frightened industry than it is about a valid technique to save that industry. These people are scared to death about losing money in the way the music industry has and, much like the music industry, will entertain just about every hair-brained customer frustrating technology they encounter. Needless to say the music industry is still around and is still being forced to reinvent itself in a way that benefits the consumer and artist more.
-_-
I can't see the public buying it. Do you remember DIVX? DVDs that automatically degrade after 48 hours? Me neither; they all crashed in flames, because the DRM was too intrusive. The public will put up with a certain amount of unintrusive DRM, like that in current DVDs, but when it gets in-your-face they reject it. And this is about as in-your-face as it gets: what happens when the kids are being baby-sat but Dad buys the DVDs? Every family would have to make a list of who bought which DVDs so as to know which finger to give the machine.
There is no way the public would touch this with a barge pole - I can see it being useful for oscar pre-releases etc. but if the firm that came up with the idea thought it had any mass-market potential they need their heads examining.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
A large percentage of the movie industry's profits comes from rentals. They'd lose money on this.
Hey, that sounds good. I hope they do this.
Those are good examples. Like I've said before, DRM and other copy-protection schemes are good choices for those who can choose them. We should be not at all concerned when, say, a pre-released piece of consumer media is subject to DRM.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
While I concur that this is a stupid plan, could you elaborate on the "treated like a thief" theme that I see so often on slashdot?
You treat most people like theives. More accurately, you treat them like they could be thieves. You lock your car and your house, because you don't trust people you haven't met. When you rent a car or a movie they go to great lengths to assure you'll give it back. You assume people are thieves because it's easier than getting your stuff back later.
When you say "treat them like thieves", the image is of throwing somebody in jail. That's not the case here.
I gotta admit, in this case the cliche looks perilously close to accurate. Taking fingerprints IS treating somebody more like a thief than a potential thief. That's a bit of a coincidence (just because it's one way to take an ID used in both processes, but they're not fingerprinting you like a thief gets fingerprinted.) But it's still incredibly, and overly, invasive.
My gist is that I don't think of DRM as "treating somebody like a thief" any more than I think of locking your house as treating people like thieves. This plan is stupid, and I'm sure not buying it, and it would never happen because the technology would be wildly inconvenient and insufficiently accurate.
But I've happily bought DRMed songs from Apple and I'd buy DRMed movies. When you buy a DRMed song you're giving them a "fingerprint", just one that's tied to your computer rather than a permanent part of you (which is the real stupid part of this plan.) I'd prefer non-DRMed ones, just in case I wanted to make a backup or use it in a different medium, but I sure understand why they don't want to see their material given away for free over the Internet, and go to some lengths to ensure it. Fingerprints are stupid, but I'm not opposed to a less invasive plan.
How is being forced to sit through 15 minutes of previews, many for DVDs that I already own, every time I insert a disc unintrusive?
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
They tried to hire me, I worked out the scheme they were proposing during the telephone call with the recruiter and started laughing.
The scheme was idiotic for four reasons. First there was simply no way that the rest of the industry was going to allow Circuit City a retail monopoly over the players or the content. Secondly the entire industry had tooled up to launch DVD which was set to become their biggest bonanza since the launch of CD, the Circuit City scheme meant launching a totally new standards war after the standard had launched. Third it was not even profitable for the studios, the DVDs had to sell at a discount to unrestricted DVDs but most people are unlikely to pay to watch the content a second time. Fourth, people want to collect DVDs and the copyright restriction meant that their collection would be worthless.
I don't see how this new scheme would be any more acceptable, it is idiotic to think that consumers would accept biometric identification to watch a DVD, they don't need to do that today there is no way that they would buy a player or content with that feature as long as unrestricted content was available. The legacy base of DVD players means that there is no chance that the studios could take unrestricted content off sale.
The industry is starting to get concerned about what happens in a few years time when the DVD patents expire and manufacturers start producing official players that are not zone locked and do not have navigation restrictions. Their current hope is that everyone will have upgraded to blue ray or whatever by then, I don't think so. Very few people have HDTV today and very few people care as much about high definition as techy types think.
Sure I would like a better picture on my TV, but not if I have to give a DNA blood sample and pay five times as much for the content.
I seem to recall that Neal Stephenson parodied this type of attitude in Snow Crash, the federal govt. workers who have to give blood samples to log into their computers etc.
Technologists can try treat people like machines but people don't have to let them.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Plus, it's a dupe of a troll story.
Nobody is going to accept jumping through these kinds of hoops just to watch a movie at home, and the industry knows it.
This is just another "story" Slashdot is running so they can get 500+ comments railing against yet another feared invasion of privacy, jacking up ad hit counts.
Watch, now I'll get six replies of tin-foil hat types saying "I don't know... with that asshole Bush in office, I wouldn't put it past the Military-Industrial Complex to do something like this. People are sheep and will probably accept it. Blah blah blah..." Heaven spare me from college undergrads.
The broadcast flag is not over yet. The court only found that the FCC did not have the authority to enforce it. Watch soon for Congress to pass a law that does give them said authority, and then the broadcast flag will be reinstated.
Protected CDs have quite a few problems on computer drives, MP3 cd players and they absolutely won't work on many car audio systems.
Oddly enough, some people are still buying them. And above all, so many people aren't aware of this fact, until they try to put that CD in their car audio player..
I have no comment on your opinion of DRM one way or the other, but I would just like to point out that your sig file ("You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.") is the smartest goddamn thing I've seen posted on Slashdot in months.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
no...not the codec, the other thing that limited your viewing.
Look, the thing is, people buy movies and such so they'd have the convenience to watch it any time, at any place of their own choosing, and as many times as they want. Certainly, MPAA et al can put in the restrictions, but they are just slapping us in the face at the same time they are robbing us. Why would we pay for something that will be less convenient? Let them put these things out and let them lose their money on it.
What the hell ever happened to "the customer is always right" anyway? Why have we gone from being customers to being cattle? Why is it that the people who are NOT pirating the movies, etc., getting more angry about these things? Why do we think $25-$50 for a DVD is a reasonable price?
And while I am at it, how could the MPAA claim it's losing money that it's never made?
It is when you can skip it and it is against the CSS license for a player to let you skip it - and if they don't license CSS but use it anyway, they are liable for DMCA and patent violations and if you make a crack which lets you skip them your are liable for a DMCA violation.
It is DRM enforced by technology with the LAW backing up the technology - so if the technology is overridden, you could find your behind being "overridden" by a big man named Bubba in the Federal pen for the next 5 years after which it will be illegal for you to have many jobs in the tech field (either directly or because your boss doesn't want a court to take and redistribute all its assets to satisfy a "negligent hiring/retention" suit if you do anything in the future). You could probably still work at a burger joint though.
DRM - it sure is.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
IMHO, this goes back to the "greed is good" binge of the 1980's, which was really an economic transformation of the US. (and beyond) Prior to the transformation, GM/Ford/etc was in the business of making cars, and sold those cars to make money so they could go on making and selling cars, and reward their employees and stockholders. The ??AA were in the business of making music and movies, and selling/showing them so they could go on...etc.
After the transformation, it seems that every business is first and foremost in the business of making money. The products they market are mere incidentals, necessary evils in order to further their primary mission. Witness that GM revenue is divided 1/3 - 2/3 between selling cars and selling financing. (forget which third is which) They're making a significant amount of their revenue dabbling in what used to be banks' business. Or consider that a sizable part of Microsoft's revenue comes from playing financial games, and that their multibillion dollar war chest gives them a lot of ability to do this.
There's a more subtle shift here, too. Prior to the transformation of the 80's, employees were valuable resources, especially those with experience. Now employees are annoying expenses, and a drain on profits. Customers used to be valued, hoping for return business. Now, at least in some industries, they're "thieves."
I had a discussion with my son about this last night on the way home. He received several downloaded songs from friends of a European group called, "Nightwish." He now has 5 of their 6 CDs, and my daughter has 2. (and as soon as my son can find the 6th, actually their first, he wants to buy it.) I asked how likely he would have been to plunk down $17 for a CD never having really heard their music, and of course he said, "not at all." A few downloaded songs have translated to 7, potentially 8 sales, in my immediate family.
Oh, some time ago, after he had begun his Nightwish collection I sternly cautioned him about any trading in downloaded songs.
The ??AA is also more than a little STUPID in counting every downloaded song or movie as a lost unit of revenue. Case in point, me. I think long and hard before plunking down $15 for a CD. If CDs (that I like) were $7.50, I'll bet I'd buy more than twice as many. If they were $5.00, I'll bet my purchases would more than triple. At some point, I'd reach my limit of storage and clutter.
But for the guy the RIAA is suing with 10,000 songs, or whatever, he NEVER HAD the kind of money to buy that much music. Even if he had a good income, when it costs real money, you balance your music against food, rent, clothing, gasoline, eating out, going to the movies, going to concerts, etc. The only reason he would have that collection of 10,000 songs is because they were (at the time) effectively free, costing only bandwidth and space.
Choke off ALL downloads, filesharing, etc, and I suspect the ??AA wouldn't see more than even a 10% increase in their sales. Lacking the "free" source, I'll bet those people would simply choose not to buy, most of the time.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Think of the cost to the retail outlets to install and train thier staff to use the biometric scanner.
The retail stores would screem bloody murder if the distributers don't take on the cost burdon{sp} of the devices.
Beyond that there would have to be some way to insure that the staff at the retail outlet acctually encoded the data on the RFID.
Not to help out the researchers but a system of first play setup might be do able. But then you face the problem that half the people I know have never figured out how to set the time on their VCR.
This strikes me as a lot of the media will be returned or attempted to be returned as faulty. I can't see this getting any farther than the orginal DVIX (the DVD system where you had to pay every time you watched the DVD not the codex.)
JACEM
DOC Disinformation Obfuscation and Confusion
The carrot to FUD's stick
Yes, it's good when a society doesn't go frantically passing laws whenever something bad happens. Laws shouldn't be passed unless they have a good chance of actually solving the problem.
It will be an interesting demonstration of technical abilities, but who is going to pay more for player that's harder to use?
Until the players are widely adopted, what movie company is going to release their product exclusively in such a limited format? So we have a chicken and egg problem.
Requiring the buyer to be present kills off all mail order and gift sales. Bye bye Amazon.
This encoding equipment would need to be at all retail locations. Hello higher prices! And don't forget lost sales when the equipment fails.
No more rental market. Bye bye Netflix and Blockbuster.
And the real secret agenda here: No more used DVD sales! Every viewer has to buy a new DVD!!
While the last part is an MPAA wet dream come true, they'd have to virtually end their highly profitable DVD sales until they could force consumers to buy the new players. Then it becomes a tug-o-war over will the consumers buy new, much more restrictive, players just to keep watching movies, or will the movie studios lose their immensely profitable home market DVD sales.
My guess, this is another DIVX fiasco in the making. A system that works, does what it is intended to do, and will never sell. There really is a limit to the stupidity of the consumers, and I think this exceeds it.
Even if the government mandates all new player have this feature (and survives the next election after doing so), they can't force you to buy them.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I almost never buy movies, for me. I do often give them as gifts. Which would be hard with this scheme. I bet lots of revenue from people like me will be lost if they do this. Haha, then they will the pirates.
That would be cracked, here is how:
buy dvd
find out how encryption works (using your finger)
write software to decrypt dvd (using the key [value of your finger])
extend software to write to an MPEG from video
distrobute MPEG
Once the software has been written, it can be distrobuted from france and anybody who buys a dvd can use the software to create an mpeg out of it (although it would cost as much as a fingerprint scanner for the initial uploaders first upload)
Nothing to see here. Just a trial baloon from a some dude trying to maybe sorta sell an idea. "Gadh said he could not reveal specifically how the system would work, as it is still in the research stage. A prototype will be available by the end of the summer, he said, and at that point, it will be shopped around to movie studios and technology companies." "I don't know quite what is going to work in the real world," Gadh said.
You can't take the sky from me...
You could still buy films from hong kong and other film producing nations.
Stop intellectual property from infringing on me
People WILL give up biometric data for $20. People give up their passwords for chocolate readily, and they have some appreciation for what they're good for. I have no doubt that a black hat could take a stack of DVDs out with a fingerprint scanner, trade DVDs for names and thumbprints, and come home with more biometric data than you can shake a copy of the Patriot Act at.
Couch it in a "biometrics data" study on some college campus and you'll have kids LINING UP to give you biometric data, and probably more than that. They sign up for credit cards, giving name, address, income, and a ton more for a t-shirt. I've seen it happen. They run out of shirts before they run out of applicants.
Combine it with Avi Rubin's "get all the identity-theft information you can for $50" class and you've got a world-class identity theft scheme.
Dare to Hope. Prepare to be Disappointed.
It is being nitpicky. Just because something is implemented as an affirmative defense does not mean that it is not a right. Few would argue that you have a "right" to defend yourself for example and self-defense is an affirmative defense.
Here's another example where the makers of Mountain Dew invited potential "beta testers" to provide mailing address, e-mail and date of birth (presumably for a product sample). The form was insecure and there was no privacy statement on the page, yet the kids who read Digg eagerly signed up (in spite of some grumpy old Slashdotter posting about the absurdity of it all).
I'm sure many teens and pre-teens wouldn't bat an eye at providing virtually any type of personal data (including biometric) if it meant getting something as appealing as a free can of soda. Hell, I think most mainstream web surfers are the same regardless of age. Virtually any student or friend of mine who calls me about a computer problem starts by blurting out their passwords to me even before I can stop them--they want to be 'helpful,' but I think they also want to demonstrate loyalty and trust.
I may be wrong, but die-hard fans of certain products or movies might actually like the idea of giving personal data to entities they want to identify (or be identified) with. If Apple wanted your fingerprint to activate Tiger, you can bet some hard-cores would consider it some kind of compliment or rite of passage.
"...all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness..." yada yada
That's OK; I'm sure the pirated versions won't require this.
Seriously, when are the DRM-supporters going to realize that they're just making piracy more and more appealing? I don't buy (or pirate) movies, but if I ever wanted to, I certainly wouldn't consent to giving up biometric data. The scary thing is that most people probably would, no questions asked.
There are no natural rights. Rights are bestowed upon by a governmental authority.
You've got that backwards. Naturally, every person has the (legal, if not material) power to do whatever they please. Governments are composed of people, artificial entities created specifically to combine material powers in order to curb other people's powers for some supposed greater good. What powers are not curbed by the government are your "rights", i.e. those actions that are not held to be wrong by the government, and thus OK (or "right") to do. If it's not explicitly said to be wrong (illegal), then it is within your rights.
Governments did not create people and endow them with certain rights; people created governments and endowed them with the power to curb others peoples' powers for some collective good. The power of a government derives from people, not vice versa.
Sometimes it's a small number of powerful people, who together (as "the government") curb the power of large numbers of other people; other times, it's many people curbing the powers of a few. In both cases the result can be good or bad, but in both cases, the power wielded by "government" ultimately derives from some set of people.
As for "pursuit of happiness", I'm aware that that's not explicitly stated in the Constitution (and it would be an awfully imprecise way to say it, so that's a good thing). I meant that as illustration that this point of view (government derives power from the people, not vice versa) was held by the founders of our government. As for what is in the Constitution, I refer you to the 10th Amendment:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
One last bit...
The constitution grants the federal government the explicit power to regulate copyrights. That is what this is all about.
Here's how that works, start to finish:
1) In the beginning, the people can do what they want, including copy things.
2) The people allow their government to limit that right to copy.
3) Government limits that right to copy with copyright law.
4) The Fair Use doctrine limits what copyright law can limit.
5) What's acts of copying are not made explicitly illegal by law (those allowed under the Fair Use doctrine) remains as your legal RIGHTS.
The mindset you exhibit is why many of the founders did not want to enumerate any rights in the Constitution, and they were only later tacked on in the Bill of Rights. They felt that whatever was not explicitly disallowed was within your rights, and that if they said "these are your rights", people would think exclusively instead of inclusively and believe those rights were ALL of their rights, instead of just a representative sample of specially protected, very important rights.
I believe such exclusive thinking in the general public (including lawmakers and lawyers) is why, as other responses to me said, the term "right" now means in legalese a specifically enumerated thing that the govt says you can do, and not as is commonly (and correctly) meant, anything that you are not expressly forbidden from doing.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."