Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Give Your DVD Player The Finger

Posted by Zonk on from the hilarious-double-entendre dept.

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.'"

4 of 620 comments (clear)

  1. Gifts? Online purchases? by lecithin · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "biometric data, like a fingerprint or iris scan, which would be added to the DVD's RFID tag."

    Can I just use the finger that I found at Wendy's?

    Seriously though, what if you wanted to buy a gift for somebody? This isn't going to work all that well.

    How about on-line purchases? Would they take a 'sample' and keep it on file to encode something at a later time. Who is going to trust the security of that?

    I don't see it happening.

    --
    It could be worse, it could be Monday.
  2. No fair-use? No thanks! by garcia · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Then, when the DVD was popped into a specially equipped DVD player, the viewer would be required to re-enter his or her password or fingerprint. The system would require consumers to buy new DVD players with RFID readers.

    The market has already proven this won't work.

    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.

    Thanks for giving this company free advertising to the media conglomorates Wired/Slashdot, the market appreciates it!

    When something strinkingly familiar was posted a couple of days ago here, I said almost exactly what I am going to say here: How does this product enable me to enact fair-use?

    It doesn't.

  3. Re:Gifts? Online purchases? by lowrydr310 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    No doubt the technology to strip this sort of scan will be developed, once it is reverse-engineered.

    Not everything can be reverse-engineered effectively. As far as I know the latest DirecTV encryption technology hasn't been broken yet, and it's been out for a while. Then again, maybe it can be broken (or has been broken) but it's just easier for people to hack another provider's encoding/encryption scheme.

  4. I guess this is the end of Amazon and Netflix... by cutecub · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Seriously, requiring that you authenticate yourself to the media before purchasing or playing it would completely end mail-order DVD sales and Mail-order DVD rentals.

    That sounds like a pretty big chunk-o-change to throw out the window. Not even the MPAA is that stupid.

    maybe.

    -S