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."

Comments

Are they trying to encourage piracy

[clickclickdrone]

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..

Re:Are they trying to encourage piracy

[NinjaFarmer]

My next house will have a faraday cage.

Re:Are they trying to encourage piracy

[Shaper_pmp]

More to the point, how is embedding an RFID chip in the disc going to prevent people playing region-encoded discs outside of their regions?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't region-encoded discs already... well... region-encoded?

Either people buy legit US/Japanese/whatever players (which you can't guard against with RFID chips), or they get their existing player chipped to bypass the whole region-protection mechanism - is there any reason to think this isn't going to work with the new RFID players, too?

Of course, if the DVD players refuse to play unRFIDed discs then they'll be a bit useless for all the existing DVDs out there (nothing like breaking backwards-compatability to hurt a new product). If the RFIDed DVDs have some kind of (data) flag on the disc to turn RFID-checking it on it's liable to be trivial to reverse-engineer or omit the flag when copying the disc, too.

Even if it does somehow "eliminate optical disc piracy in the entertainment and IT sectors", does anyone else think it's wonderful how they've finally managed to do it just about the time that broadband and bittorrent have made "optical disc" piracy obsolete, even in the mainstream?

Re:Are they trying to encourage piracy

[Turken]

Why bother killing the chip? Couldn't a person just use the rfid technology against the machine? In another post around here, it was mentioned that the player may have a "check" chip embedded somewhere in the case to make sure that the player's rfid reader is working properly, and optical bits on the disc to make sure the reader looks for a chip.

So, what I'm wondering is why not just cut a working rfid tag from a disc and stick it right in the case next to the reader? Then, no matter what disk you put in the player, if the player looks for a chip it will find one.

Even if there is an optical bit on the disc telling the chip reader what specific response to look for, I'm willing to bet that the chip reader will have some sort of generic pass code that can be sent to it (used for debugging or testing purposes) and it will only be a matter of time before some engineers crack the system to make generic rfid chips to place in the player case to bypass the disc-embedded ones.

hmm....

[Yahweh Doesn't Exist]

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

Warning Label

[celardore]

As long as they include a warning label on the CD case (like the 'copy protected' ones), so we can choose not to buy it that will be fine.

If it won't play in my DVD player, it's not a DVD

[iainl]

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.

The end of those stickers?

[portwojc]

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

That would be nice.

Long-term impact

[tygerstripes]

Okay, so most people - especially the most tech-savvy - won't bother buying an RFID-equipped player at first. However, if the industry enforcers (RIAA, BPI et al) push it hard enough this could well find its way into most players without the average consumer even noticing. It's not a certainty, but a frightening possibility.

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.

Could mean consumer-unbreakable protection

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Dear hollywood

[91degrees]

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.

Re:What a bargain

[tomhudson]

Costs more, does less.

Sony ... is that you?

Seriously, I've always told my friends to steer away from name-brand dvd players for exactly that reason. My supposedly crappy Apex is region-free out of the box, plays everything I can throw at it, and "just works". Other brands that my friends and relatives bought AFTER I WARNED THEM NOT TO just don't.

And when I go "I told you so" they go "yeah, but its a name brand and it costs more. It SHOULD work better."

People don't listen. The worst part ... when their name brand unit dies ... AND THEY DO IT AGAIN! Rrrrr! (And its not even Talk Like A Pirate Day until tomorrow)

Article at ArsTechnica doubts if it will work

[Krishna Dagli]

New chip to thwart DVD piracy is a long way off and faces considerable challenges

Re:The right to steal?

[temcat]

Yes - by your new definition of the word "stealing", which now includes playing out-of-region disks.

Please explain to me

[tomstdenis]

How playing "out of region" DVDs is bad?

Suppose I'm a fan of movies made in France ... 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?

What they really should call that is "out of monopololistic control zone."

Tom