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RFID To Track Play of DVDs And CDs?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the long-arm-of-DRM dept.

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."

5 of 237 comments (clear)

  1. hmm.... by Yahweh+Doesn't+Exist · · Score: 5, Interesting

    and everyone pays for a more expensive RFID-capable CD/DVD player because...?

    1. Re:hmm.... by Tim+C · · Score: 3, Interesting

      ...because by the time your current player finally dies, that's all that's available?

      This idea is a complete non-starter in any case - are they really saying that I won't be able to burn my crappy home movies of my daughter to DVD to post to my parents?

      --
      It's official. Most of you are morons.
  2. The end of those stickers? by portwojc · · Score: 4, Interesting

    With RFID chips embedded maybe we won't have to peel three seperate stickers off the DVD case.

    That would be nice.

  3. Well, I've tried to play nice... by ProppaT · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've bought thousands of cds. I also have hundreds of records and various other forms of music media. And music isn't cheap! I refuse to buy into music stores such as iTunes because I feel it's ludicrous to have to pay what adds up to almost the same price as buying the physical disc to have digital copies of music files that are encoded lower than I would have encoded it myself if I had the disc. But, I swear, the second they pull a stunt like this, I'm out. See ya. I'll still buy cds from all the independant artists I love, because I'm sure they'll avoid this like the plague. But it looks like the only option will be music services such as Yahoo! Unlimited that charge me $60 a year to listen to whatever I want. Now if only I had broadband in my car, I'd be set...

    --
    Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
  4. Could mean consumer-unbreakable protection by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    To the people saying that a person could just "cut the wires" to the RFID reader module inside vis drive:
    Ever heard of system-on-chip?

    I can tell you right now that it is extremely doable to put the necessary rfid reader circuity inside the drive controller ASIC and connect it to a simple loop antenna by a couple of pins (remember it only needs to have a range of an inch or so).

    The controller chip could even scan for the correct impedance to prevent people from breaking the antenna trace, or (this is a good one) have a 'verification' RFID somewhere inside the drive case:
    If the RFID reader part of the controller can't read the unique id of it's matching verification RFID (remember nowadays it's possible to have a small pseudo-PROM area of an ASIC) it won't let you use the drive..

    We are seeing the end of the consumer-hackable hardware era; modern hardware can and will prevent all but the most dedicated hardware hackers with expensive logic analyzers from making unauthorized copies.