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RFID To Track Play of DVDs And CDs?
jayp00001 writes, "A Taiwan-based maker of DVDs and CDs for major studios is about to begin putting RFID chips in disks. The eventual aim is for DVD and CD players equipped with an RFID reader to prevent copied or out-of-region disks from being played."
Because when it starts getting that hard to be honest..
I buy loads of CDs from other countries, mainly US & Japan and if this will stop me being able to play them then sorry guys, I'm going to start to explore other avenues..
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
This means a new standard, and new players all round. It's no longer a DVD, and I'm certainly not running out and buying a new player for it.
On another, rather important, note, they mention it for HD-DVD. HD-DVD doesn't even _have_ region encoding, so they can't tell me the disc is from the wrong one; that's why I want HD-DVD rather than Blu-Ray.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Until someone figures out how to disable the chip? Or reconfigure the dvd drives to work around them?
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Options:-
1) Cover the disk in foil
2) snip the RFID reader in the player making it recognise legacy disk
3) destroy the RFID tag in the disk using LARGE electromagnet
4) refuse to buy one
thinking about point 3... I have used the technique before to destroy a RFID tag on thing I purchased. Aside from the problems of small popping when the foil in the tag melts, it seems to be a good way of destroying lots of tags. A strategically placed electromagnet and a sensor and you could hit every one that passed!
Signature v3.0, now with 42% less memory usage.
This sounds like just another stupid application of RFID. For the all the effort involved it would be simpler to just embed a hidden track and read that.
In that event, I have to ask a simple question:
Will the revenue previously lost to piracy be fed back to the consumer? Will we see cheaper CDs anywhere?
Of course not. It's basic fucking economic theory that you can charge more if you segregate a market. Piracy be damned, fair-use my arse - this is just a desperate attempt to control the market, which can only lead to higher prices for legitimate, law-abiding consumers.
Bastards.
Meta will eat itself
NOBODY WANTS REGION CODING. (except the publishers)
. The people who actally make the films really don't care. They get their royalties if the disc is bought in the US, Europe, Taiwan or anywhere else. They really just want to make a living doing what they love.
The end users hate region coding. It means they often have to wait, often end up with an inferior version, and basically reduces consumer choice while increasing their costs.
The manufacturers don't like region coding. It makes their players considerably less popular. They go to considerable lengths to find ways around the region coding requirement. Multi-region is a key selling point of a player to anyone with any interest in importing discs. They're going to do the ame thing to try to get around RFID chips. Or anything else you might like to try. And they're really not going to be happy about having to increase their costs to add an RFID reader. These companies are working on tiny margins. No matter how cheap, RFID readers will eat into this.
... I can read it. If it is encrypted and my player can read it, I can still read it. No matter what they try to do, unless they can come up with some sort of scheme where the complete key management is happening over a closed network that your player is mandatorily hooked up to 24/7, there is no way that this will prevent piracy.
What they will do is make the incentive bigger for criminals to copy these disks, and they make the incentive bigger for curious people to try and hack the protection of these disks. They will also piss the general disk-buying public off by creating disks that will more often not play rather than play.
No winners here... is that my problem? Last time I have seen a Hollywood movie is so long ago I can't even remember.
let's see, there's an RFID tag in the disk, the player won't play the disk of the RFID isn't correct, now there's a few options
-legacy disks won't play (people won't like it, but I can see it happening)
-legacy disks will play, the fact that RFID is needed sits as data on the disk
both things will be fixable with a programmable RFID chip, provided their code isn't too complicated (which it can't be, since they're delevering the encrypted content, the algorithm AND the key, just obfuscated)
you can also mod the player (I can see the US outlawing this).
things that will work only with option 2:
cracking the disk image before burning it or simply cutting the RFID chip in the player or wrapping it in tin foil.
If they lock some bonus content out for players that will lack the RFID reader - they will definitely sell new players(they dont cost a lot more than a few CDs/DVDs anyways)
It is unlikely that's all that will be available.
There are always at least one brand that will sell a player without rfid like what happen with dezoned dvd player. In the beginning it was difficult to find one, after a while some brand started to sell some and not it is not even possible to find a player that check zone encoding on dvd.
Off course the movie studio could use the RFID to store something mandatory to read the DVD. But that would mean making DVD incompatible with the huge park of player already existing. There is no way they will try that at the same time than they try to introduce the next generation of players ( they want people to replace their DVD player by a next generation one, not buy another dvd player )
The only way this technology would be usefull is if you make a law that outlaw DVD player with the RFID reader, but xxAA have more juicy target for their "buy you own politician puppet" budget.
Either it won't play old DVDs and home movies at all (in which case noone will buy these new drives), or it will have some extra track or encoding that indicates the presence of an rfid chip.
People figured out how to get rid of CSS, what makes the studios think that this will be any harder?
Amazing how they invest so much money in this stuff, when it's not likely to last longer than a few months.
Yes - by your new definition of the word "stealing", which now includes playing out-of-region disks.
How playing "out of region" DVDs is bad?
... but I live in Canada. Why would it be bad for me, or the producers of the media, for me to BUY a copy and have it shipped here?
Suppose I'm a fan of movies made in France
What they really should call that is "out of monopololistic control zone."
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
...that the actual sales of the protected disks are not detectably higher than the sales of the unprotected disks, while the extra manufacturing costs are a meaningful nibble out of the profit.
Of course, I have always wondered whether the push to DRM is actually driven by any clear-headed, realistic, cost/benefit analysis based on good, real data... or whether it's an irrational emotional response on the part of media executives. Or the result of very good, misleading sales pitches by the vendors of DRM technology.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
For me, that'll mean 'Radio'. Free, and ubiquitous.
Try telling someone aged about 16 about the 'digital music services' that're 'streamed everywhere, in real time, capable of being received and decoded by cheap chips built into modern mobile phones'. They get really excited, then you tell them it's called 'rad-ee-oo' and they get pissed off ;-)
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Sure, until they ALL have RFID.
Then what choice is there?