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A Chip on DVDs Could Prevent Theft
Dieppe writes "A simple chip added to a DVD disk could prevent retail theft. According to the AP article at MSNBC, the chip would be activated at the register to make a previously dark area of the DVD clear, and therefore readable. Could this help to stem the tide of the approximate $400 million dollars in losses from brick and mortar stores? Game console DVDs could also be protected this way too. Could this help to bring the prices down on DVD games and movies?"
It's not theft! It's copyright infring... oh wait.
Sounds like a sharpie might be useful...
Could this help to bring down the prices????? You HAVE to be kidding. That really is funny.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
As long as I can still back up my DVD's to my HDD and then view them off my own burned DVD's, I don't care what they do!
You try keeping your daughter from destroying those Disney DVD's that are only released once a few decades!
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
It won't help, people will just find a way to do the activation themselves at home. Just like they have with all the electronic security measures. What's for damn sure is that even if it worked (it won't) it won't do anything to lower prices. They've already got us hooked like junkies at the prices they're charging and there's no way they'll lower them until demand drops off.
The Farewell Tour II
$10 bucks say they try to find a way to add copy protection into the chip as well.
"Could this help to bring the prices down on DVD games and movies?"
No, but it could raise the profit margin.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Bottom line is, apparently on Slashdot you can substitute "could" with "won't" and you get to read the actual material we're handed. Cut down the pointless speculation guys, it's lame.
So not only will there be motivation to steal DVDs, but also the activator as well. Bravo.
Could it help bring prices down? Umm no if anything manufacturers would inflate the cost and pass it on to consumers.
Article should read At home, using a cheap Chinese device, the chip is activated and sends an electrical pulse through the coating, turning it clear and making the disc playable.
China thanks you for creating another black market for it to thrive in.
As if they would pass savings on to the consumer. At best they will just stuff their pockets with any profit gained from decreased theft, and there will be a hack on the internet within a week. Same old, same old.
Wouldn't it just be easier to download the movie instead of risking getting caught shoplifting? =p
>>Could this help to stem the tide of the approximate $400 million dollars in losses from brick and mortar stores? Game console DVDs could also be protected this way too. Could this help to bring the prices down on DVD games and movies?
/. regarding the article.
All these questions in the summary discourage me to continue on reading the article because it appears that the submitter is very, very confused and is asking for clarification from
No, people that steal wouldn't buy if they couldn't steal. The price of the dvd themselves + the burning is very cheap and the theft is really only worth the physical amount. People that steal likely aren't going to be buying if they couldn't steal. If they can't steal physically they will turn to downloading or getting a blockbuster membership and turn to ripping/burning. If anything, this added ability will just make the checkout lines in Best Buy take longer. Oh, it will also increase the production costs and the machine that will 'validate' the dvd will likely INCREASE the cost. I'm not an endorser of people stealing, but I doubt this would have anything but a negative effect. Hell, if the 'validation' fails 1 outta 100 times the whole system will likely collapse and it will just be a huge waste of money.
We are pleased to announce that all our new DVDs will be rendered theft-proof by the new on-disk chip enhancement. Thanks to our new ultra-efficient disk manufacturing plant on Guadalcanal, the extra charge for this service will not be more than $1.00 per disk...
rj
the problem with this idea is that it assumes that people are stealing the movie because they want to get the movie without paying for it. While that probably represents some portion of the people who steal dvds, I would suspect that many others are stealing just to steal. Dvds tend to be out on the shelves in large quantities, so they are probably one of the easiest things to steal, and some people just wanna steal something.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
...the addition of this chip means you only have 48 hours to stick the DVD into your computer and run your DVD copier program.
I thought all the money they were losing was because of Pirates!
I don't understand it. They put the chip in, and then a person buys it and the clerk activates it, and it will still make it onto the internet somehow.
I wonder how much of the quoted $400 Mil are stolen from the inside...
Is there heaven? Is there Hell? Is that a Tuna Melt I smell?-Primus
I give it a month before a workaround gets published on the net. Melinda Gates anyone?
I typically find that the DVD costs less than the soundtrack. Neither is likely to get cheaper.
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
How much is "$400 million dollars" divided by the number of discs sold in the same timespan (a year), and what is the cost of the anti-theft chip per disc? It would be interesting to compare the two.
You're talking about a cartel that engages in illegal price fixing, a cartel which uses the government to enforce their pathetic copy protection schemes, and EA. You'd have to be truly moronic to believe that anything short of the near death of an industry would lower prices.
It's been a long time.
Retail theft of entertainment products, including video games, accounts for as much as $400 million in annual losses, according to the Entertainment Merchants Association.
I just love those numbers. I'm much more concerned about the estimated $120 million in lost productivity resulting from time spent dealing with broken shoelaces, and the estimated $275 million in annual losses to people who are shortchanged by hot dog vendors.
How about a moratorium on all numbers that were pulled out of a PR guy's ass?
Three Squirrels
"A simple chip added to water could prevent retail theft. According to the AP article at MSNBC, the chip would be activated at the register to make previously dark water clear, and therefore drinkable. Could this help to stem the tide of the approximate 400 million dollars in losses from brick and water stores? Sparkling water could also be protected this way too. Could this help to bring the prices down on inflated water prices?"
Well, there is a great idea in here somewhere. "A chip smaller than the head of a pin is placed onto a DVD along with a thin coating that blocks a DVD player from reading critical information on the disc. At the register, the chip is activated and sends an electrical pulse through the coating, turning it clear and making the disc playable." Wow.
How long do you think it will take for these "DVD Decryption" devices, as it were, to hit the black market and for plans to be readily available on the internet?
How about, a security device hidden on the DVD itself that will ALWAYS make the security device go off (electrical tape be damned) unless it's rung up at the register first? That would sound like a useful application to me. Come on... people will stop stealing just because they can't watch it? The basic principle of stealing/hacking/whatever is first and foremost "do it to see if you can" right? I can't imagine the inordinate amount of people who will laugh their asses off after stealing this worthless media content, if for no other reason just to piss off Wal*Mart or whoever. It's fun sticking it to the proverbial man.
Another point, how many of you have bought a DVD or other related product, and gotten the hidden security device on it deactivated at the register, just to have to door alarm beep at you and you have to pull out your receipt to verify your purchase? How many people are going to make it out the door and to their homes, to discover their DVD wasn't REALLY activated at the register, before they figure out it's a bad idea? You think Wal*Mart is going to believe you when you come back in and say "Yes I bought this, no it wasn't activated for some reason" ? NO NO NO NO NO.
There ARE some useful applications for this technology, oh yes, there are; however, I really think this one is quirky. Come on Corporate America.
I sell out to The Man every day.
Stop treating us like criminals and start treating us like customers. How's that for an idea?
it should lower the markup on the DVD's because they don't need to recoup their (real world physical) losses due to theft.
Isn't that what the record industry said when CD's came out?
"The price will come down."
Then, they changed it to, "Well, you're getting better quality. That's why CD's are so expensive."
Sound great, until someone gets access to a machine that can change the little chip...
Oh yea, and they'd have to have one of those machines at every cash register.
than putting an empty case on the shelf, and having the shop assistant put the DVD in the case/exchange it for a full case at the register? Is that too difficult for stores to do?
If you all Google Slashdot, will it Slashdot Google?
And... I'm sure the material will degrade over time, say after 2 or 3 years, and the clear area will return to black. Heh.
Kind of like those thermal cash register receipts that fade after 12 months.. or when doused with water.
How can the industry count $400 million dollars of losses of sales from people who obviously never intended to pay?
"Could this help to bring the prices down on DVD games and movies?"
Isn't it just as likely the MPAA would raise prices citing the added cost of technology "required" to stem shoplifters?
Make it even more inconvenient to buy legitimate copies. That'll sure encourage people to buy them instead of resorting to piracy.
thing for the kids with PCs and too much time to crack. I give it two weeks when it rolls out. Anyone up for bids on the odds? Lemme call a bookie in Vegas. ;)
-- Brede
that the current theft-prevention systems always get de-activated at the register. It would really suck to get a DVD home only to realize that it was never activated.
This story reminds me of the classic tale, legend or not, of NASA engineers spending millions of dollars to create a pen that could write in zero gravity. The Russians had the exact same problem. Their solution? They used pencils. $0.00 R&D.
In this story, the "Russians", are stores like EBGames and Gamestop (using games as an example.) How did they combat this very real, complicated, and expensive issue?
They took the DVDs out of the cases. Thieves get an empty box for their trouble.
$0.00 R&D.
I think this is a good idea, in theory at least. But then wait until a couple of months later when all the 'dark' areas inexplicably start go*******NO CARRIER*******
j'ai découvert une démonstration vraiment admirable (de ce théorème général) que cette si
So can sticking the disc in a very low taser level clear this right up? Maybe a microwave on low for n - seconds?
Also the article says...
...Kestrel Wireless Inc. Could I put this on my wireless router, download an ISO and the disc will be fixed?I can't wait until I go out and buy a shiny new DVD and bring it home only to realize that the high school kid at the register failed to "activate" the disc properly... only to take it back to the store and be accused of being a thief. After all, only a thief would have an "un-activated" disc, right? blah.. I don't trust anything like this...
I am sure that they can invent something that can be installed on a million cash registers in the United States but will be impossible to procure by any other means. Why didn't anyone else think of this earlier?
I get the feeling that making it impossible to play a stolen disc isn't going to bring costs down much. Assuming (probably incorrectly) that costs are in fact high in order to make up for losses in theft/piracy, somebody stealing a 6 cent disc instead of paying $20 for it (or $60-ish for a game) before making illegal copies probably wasn't all that a significant loss in the scheme of things. On the other hand, this would make buying entertainment products on physical media all the more annoying.
I started buying DVDs in 96. Back then it was 10-13. Now, with stagflation starting to hit, we are looking at increases in oil (which forms the plastics), inflation slowly creeping up, and our economy slowing down.
Where the heck did this come from? I thought piracy was the big deal here... :-)
I agree with the fact that others will just pick up discs from a movie rental shop and burn from there. People who steal from stores will just find other ways to manage to get the media to play. People have conjured up various ways to bypass security measures before- what will be different here?
As for personal property, What is wrong with personal backups of your own media? You pay the high cost of a movie- you should be able to copy it as many times as you want for personal use.
When beta was on top, the industry wanted VHS- when it really wasn't superior... just bigger tapes in all honesty. We buy more movies, repurchase what we already have, and more money goes to the Movie industry. They know many clever ways to exploit buyers... this isn't going to lower prices any more than anything else. They are used to people paying a certain amount for movies, it isn't going to get any cheaper.
Movie Industry= Money Whores
Judging by how often the door alarm goes off, a chip being activated or deactivated at the register has a HIGH RATE OF FAILURE.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Of course prices won't be lowered. More likely they will raise the prices and justify this to the general public by saying that it costs more to make the disk with this feature. Not a huge raise, maybe 50 cents to a dollar higher. The public gripes and moans and pays anyways, just like we do with gas and Windows.
That's like TicketBastard lowering their labor and distribution costs by allowing you to print tickets at home on your own printer, instead of having them mailed. But it costs the consumer *more* to print their own ticket at home (isn't it like $3 extra???) and mailing, which should cost them more, is no extra charge. What a racket.
All shoplifting deterrence boils down to either intimidation or shame. It isn't enforceable. You have no right to detain or search someone you can't prove stole something, and people are well within their rights to tell you to get bent if you try (and physically harm you if you try to force the issue). If you are able to bring enough force (or intimidation) to hold them, you're both criminally and civilly liable if you cannot prove they stole something.
Well, if more retailers examined the footage closely, they would find that it's mostly the same kids stealing and a lot of them know people at the counter. In turn, people at the counter steal and encourage their friends to stop by and get the stuff they need. So retailers continue to pay shit wages to their workers, raise prices (like Borders) and workers continue to steal because they feel "justified". Until Netflix and bittorrent came along, the only people who lost were the consumers. Now it doesn't really matter. Anyone with a half a brain can netflix and copy dvds; it's sure a lot cheaper than driving to the mall.
I suspect most loss is due to teenage or twentysomething clerks taking them out the back door. If you have a corrupt clerk with friends as partners, he or she is just as capable of activating the chip for a stack of discs before letting friends walk out, too.
Get off my launchpad!
Bottom line: No, not at all.
The people who shoplift are not your target market anyway, have no disposable income, probably are insignificant outside high crime area/high volume retail.
It will cost money to develop the chip which will be passed on to consumers, and boosting the amount of money spent pressing each disk. Shops that do not buy the hardware to detect the chips will be losing money because the same volume of theft will occur but the real value of the otherwise worthless CD has been increased by the chip. The idea that money is actually being lost is an illusion created by the record companies who use flashy printing and threats to assign a huge price to what is really very cheap to produce per unit. There is a constant cost they incurred to make the album and then a continual advertising cost and pressing cost. The pressing cost is extremely low compared to the advertising cost but it is presented as being high. By charging outlets for theft they give outlets a reason to buy antitheft hardware. However the only thing the chips will really be useful for is DRM since once you have the chip on the disc the next step is to add a tag reader into all drives. It is another way to break the spec.
That salary inflation can only go as far as the medium is still profitable (over the long term, not necessarily individual instances). It's not really a bad thing. It directs more of the profits to the people actually involved in creating the entertainment, and less to the suits who've done nothing substantive.
If the revenue of a particular medium goes down, those sort of salaries will necessarily follow.
If you are getting them at $15 today and $11 15 years ago - that difference is covered by inflation. Here check it out at this page:
Calculate Consumer Price Index (CPI) from 1665-2012
You'll find $11 in 1992 money is equal to just under $16 of 2007 money. So if you're paying $15 you are saving almost a whole 2007 dollar! See they weren't lying CDs ARE cheaper!
(Actually a lot of places I see CDs for $17-$25 - although I don't know why anybody would by them there. Sam Goody are you listening?)
Sometimes my arms bend back.
This article reminded me of a segment I saw last year on the Dragon's Den TV show, where an inventor presented an embedded-chip technology for discs:
http://www.cbc.ca/dragonsden/e05/4.html
- Each store gets a unique ID
- Each DVD is locked to a specific store
But even then, an RFID sniffer is all you need to break it for your chosen store.Remember when you take a DVD home, and it has those sticky things along the outside that are a bitch to get off? Now that can be removed at the store, so they can deactivate the chip thingie. Seems like a decent trade to me, I hate that stuff.
The actual complex machines that *play* CDs have dropped down to now you can get a new small one portable for like $9.99 or something, it certainly didn't double or triple in price. Shoot, portable video DVD players are like 50 bucks now.
Nope, plastic disks with digital bits on them are being sold at tremendous cartel inflated hyper-gouging prices. And everyone and their cousin leroy knows that, hence why so little respect for the MAFIAA dons and their last century business models. The music and movie industries could make a lot more money and just elimnate all the DRM customer annoyances by just being realistic on prices, two bucks for a music CD, 3 bucks for a video DVD. Make them be impulse item priced, and people would by and large not even bother with downloading any more, and if they had continually dropped prices as tech advances allowed them, they could have about stopped so called "piracy" before it even got real popular. People by and large just hate to be price gouged, they lose all respect for the other side and act accordingly. The industry should look at lower per unit gross, but over all higher net by really upping volume of sales by DROPPING PRICES RADICALLY.
The doofuses who make the final pricing decisions on entertainment cartel distributed CDs and DVDs are mostly multi zillionaires who live in extremely expensive areas of the country and to them 20 bucks is chump change, nothing, like a quarter in your pocket or something, they *think* it's a cheap price, because they have no practical frame of reference compared to most people. Median US *household* income is 46 thousand bucks, it isn't $460,000 or one million 460,000 or ten million 460,000, which is what those media dons make, some huge a$$ lotta money. They have *no* practical frame of reference on pricing. They just can't relate. That's the main thing they just don't grok, which causes all the problems, and why they bribe off congress and whatnot to legislate in their business model. They just don't get it why their sales are dropping. And it's just plain stupid, they could probably make a lot more money just by being a little more realistic on retail pricing and going for a big push on volume sales.
If they want to stem the losses of lagging CD and DVD sales....
Why not start coming out with stuff that DOESN'T SUCK?
Here's an old fashioned idea:
EARN YOUR MONEY
n/t
Correct me if I am wrong, but wouldn't it be in the retailers best interest to reduce shoplifting, and not Hollywoods? I mean, once a retailer purchases their product from a producer, its in their best interest to sell all purchased units, and when items get stolen, retailers have to jack up the price to make up for the loss. either way, Hollywood gets their money and the retail is the one SOL.
That means the distributors are
A: looking for excuses that their movies just plain suck and people aren't buying them as much and are looking for means to jack up product prices, and just plain full of shit
B: Genuinely concerned about their business partners the retailers and want to get into new markets (as the article described)
Or am I missing something? I'm not exactly on the front line of retail marketing.
I wonder how secure this device actually is... how far down this list could they get?
How can it be bypassed:
[ ] Fingers - using them to remove it or scratch it
[ ] Pen - Colouring over the item to disturb the signal, and possibly also scratching it off
[ ] Foil - Wrapping it in Foil so it can't communicate to anything
[ ] Magnet - Ruining the chips ability to function
[ ] Electromagnet - Putting too much energy through any RFID circuitry to ruin it
[ ] Firmware - Upgrading the firmware of any devices that would use this signal
[ ] Oldware - Using old hardware
[ ] ?
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Yeah, I imagine it would. You probably could have even sent them off to Syria for "questioning".
This is absolutely ZERO to do with piracy. This is a scheme to prevent good old fashion 'slide the DvD into your pants and walk out' theft. You could still buy the DvD and go home and rip and copy it.
The point of any security measure is not to be invulnerable. If invulnerability is all you will settle for, get out now. It doesn't exist. The point is to increase the cost/risk/time it takes to beat the system (whatever that system might be). In this case, it means that if you want to steal a DvD you can't just walk out with it. You either need a machine to activate the DvD, which I imagine will not be free nor easily obtainable, or you need to work some social engineering magic... which increases your chances of getting caught.
Will people get around this? Sure. Would it deter a fair number of opportunist thieves if it actually works? Absolutely. The real question is if the new defense will actually pay for itself. There is no point in implementing such a system if the cost inflicted is more then money saved from fewer thefts.
It might bring down theft, but I'm certain it wouldn't bring down prices.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Idea is still a bust for other reasons, but you should know petty theft constitutes a non-trivial amount of theft. Of course, the majority of department store theft is done by employees, and you can guess pretty easily how much this device would slow THAT down, but even if only 10-15 percent of DVD etc theft is done by dumb kids, it still ads up to 10s of millions of dollars a year in lost profit. You can ask yourself whether that's worth all the issues of failed validation, training and infrastructure investment that it would cost to reduce that number, and probably suspect the answer is no, but that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of people stealing media that wouldn't have whatever device it takes to circumvent this thing.
Cheers.
Relax I just want some peanuts.
"It will also get product into a lot more outlets that are afraid of theft, including grocers," Fisher said.
So, unless you pay for that turkey breast at the register the chip won't release the amino acids that will form a complete protein? Your soda won't have any carbonation? Your milk will spoil in eight hours instead of eight days?
The R&D in biotechnology and other ancillary tech would drive the price of a cheap TV dinner to eight bucks, and it would still taste like it had been stepped on by a factory worker in North Dakota.
Because if they can activate it and make it clear, and deactivate it and make it opaque, that sounds like an ideal theft protection system for DVD rental places. If a person happens to walk out with a disc they didn't pay for it won't do them any good. When a person rents the disc, it gets activated and they can watch it. When it returns, they deactivate it so it can't be played by any would-be-thief, and then they put it back on the shelf.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
There is the company that makes the locking DVD cases for Blockbuster (where the cases have a locking bar, but its removed at the cashier, and the case just works as a normal DVD case for the customer, and there is this:
http://www.clear-vu.com/default.asp?contentID=565
These two technologies are as secure if not more secure than the chip idea, and require zero modification to the DVD or CD media.
Yes, its not 100% secure, but the decoupler for this will likely be the same difficulty to obtain as the item that zaps the chip. To boot, its existing technology, and doesn't cost much more.
of course is to burn a unique code into the space (not 1 bit on/off, say 8x8 64 bits) - hey presto - your disk only plays in your DVD player and has to be thrown away when your DVD player bites the dust ....
(what you were going to patent that as a business plan? and I just gave it away by publishing prior art? oh how sad)
400 million in stolen DVD's? Well lets see, they sell what, over a billion DVD's a year (google it)? So lets say this thing eliminated stolen DVD's. So they could save 400 million / 1 billion, that's less than $.50 a DVD.
Bring down the cost of DVD's? Yeah, whatever...
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
Retail Stores don't set prices. They often go by the price the manufacturer sets. What would bring prices down is reduced taxes on corporations.
\
I can't believe that so many here still give any worth or credence to so-called "Intellectual Property". At first I thought the comments were jokes, or maybe comments from a few who are still being fooled (by the old favor-currying laws of the early US) into thinking that any datem can be owned, but instead it turns out that it's -still- a prevailant way of thinking.
-Benjamin Vander Jagt
benvanderjagt@yahoo.com
A physical disk is about to become a costly way to distribute data. To have any hope to compete with distribution over the net prices need to go down, not up, and somehow I don't see adding this technology pushing the price of the disk down. If anything I would expect a certain industry to implement the reverse, causing the disk to go opaque X days after being sold. That this would coincide with an increased price of disks is completely coincidental of course.
When a thief steals a copy of a DVD it equals to just one sale - when you download it from the internet it equals a zillion billion shmillions!
finally an easy question
"Could this help to bring the prices down on DVD games and movies?""
no. nothing will ever bring down prices on DVDs.
A chip on a DVD will cost more to manufacture. Therefore increasing the price users will need to pay for DVD's that are already overpriced. Whats wrong with the current system of only putting the sleave on display. This is whaqt most places in the UK do.
I'd rather the media for which I'm paying money hasn't been lovingly fondled by a teenage moron with seventeen inch painted nails and four scratchy rings from Elizabeth Duke on each finger.
Real question is: will it be a part of the next gen DRM?
I mean, rhetoric about cutting down losses and all, well, it's good and fine. But here you have something that prevents a disc from being played, unless the correct key is sent to a chip. Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Pinky? Because I'm sure that someone at Sony just did. And if (ad absurdum) they didn't, then MS just did, in its quest to convince the MPAA and RIAA to make its own protection schemes the new entertainment centre standard.
I mean, it's a no brainer. Make the disc revert to opaque after a while, and have to be re-activated. So every time it has to be played in an authorized player.
As a bonus, it's got all the potential in the world to implement some other nasty roadblocks to fair use. E.g.,
- region coding. No more just messing with the firmware to make other region DVDs play, the chips for different regions can be physically tuned to different frequencies.
- killing the second-hand market for good. E.g., make the chip also contain a small flash area, just enough to hold the player's own key. The first time it's played, it stores the player's ID there, and subsequently refuses to activate on anything else. (Extra bonus: now you also need need to buy a new DVD each time you buy a new player.)
- limits on how often you can play the DVD. Pretty trivial: the chip also contains a counter, and when that limit is reached, it can no longer be activated. In the video market it actually has actually a legitimate use: mail-order rentals where you don't actually have to bring it back. But imagine the fun when your next Windows version has such a chip, to stop all those pirates from installing one copy of Windows on 20 machines. (And incidentally also stop anyone from reinstalling it more than once or twice after their hard drive failed, or they got pwned by a virus, or whatever.)
Etc.
And unlike just encryption, some of these can be a much bigger pain in the rear to defeat.
E.g., a counter on the chip can physically and irreversibly blow a tiny fuse for each time it's played. When it's out of fuses, that's it. There is no decryption key you can post on Digg or print on a t-shirt, that will bypass a physically destroyed circuit.
E.g., the chip doesn't need to be reprogrammable from outside in any form or shape. So there's no way to just crack its firmware to make it stay transparent. In fact, at that size and given that you want the absolute minimum power consumption, it doesn't need a firmware at all. It can simply be hard-wired.
Downside, there are physical ways to attack it, such as replacing the chip or marinating the disc in some chemical that neutralizes the dye. Both are a far bigger pain in the arse for Jack Sixpack than just downloading a cracked driver or firmware. I don't see Jack drilling holes and inserting micro-chips that gladly. Plus, it requires buying something tangible, such as a replacement chip, which is easier to trace and prosecute than an offshore warez site.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
All a thief has to do is buy another copy of the DVD legitimately and then return the inactive one complaining it doesn't work. The teller will swipe it to activate it. The thief comes back later and complains it still doesn't work and demand a refund. So for their efforts the store hasn't stopped theft, has increased their number of returns (since many of the returns will be genuine) and invested in an expensive and ineffective technology.
I really don't see this one flying.
Polycarbonate discs are ridiculously cheap, and quite durable
A polycarbonate disc with any form of chip inserted into the structure will weaken the disc, leading to cracks, and exploding discs. DVDs are spun at various speeds, faster in some drives than others. Perhaps if the chip could be programmed to detect unauthorised players and detonate in them... no, I don't want to give the DVD CCA any more stupid ideas...
A single chip will not do either, because it will create an imbalance, which the mechanism of the drive (which is of course, as cheap and feeble as the manufacturer can realistically make it) would have to cope with, so there would have to be two chips, placed exactly 180-degrees around the disc. That would also contribute towards straight-line fractures. The only place a single chip could be placed to avoid that problem is right in the centre of the disc, where there is, unfortunately, already a hole.
Retail stores in the UK cut down on DVD theft by keeping DVDs behind the counter, leaving only the cases on display. The cases also contain assorted anti-theft devices which react with the radio-based scanners at the shop entrance.
I rarely buy CD's/DVD's at shops anyway; they are too expensive. I tend to buy via the net. (One boxed set of CD's recently cost me £38 including tax, import duty, and carriage from the USA, compared to £79 in the high street. These particular discs were marked 'Made by EMI Swindon' and had been reduced by over 50% by shipping them across the atlantic twice. Go figure.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
"Could this help to bring the prices down on DVD games and movies?"
You're kidding or being sarcastic, right? If the content publishers achieve that kind of monopolistic control, prices will go up, not down.
Or if you really wanted to stuff things up, take a small crowbar in with you, and casually remove the activation mechanism from the store.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
But how much is from base materials? Originally, probably a large proportion. Now? Pennies on the dollar.
Look at the price of cars, TV's, DVD players, computers, HDDs, etc.
Have they gone up with inflation? Stayed the same? No.
So why is the CD still so expensive? The argument for extending copyright was to increase the value of works to the owner (without having to raise prices), so if it is the compensation for copyright (the only thing that CD's get that cars don't) then that shows that the copyright extention isn't enough for the owners, or at least doesn't work.
This is like the reverse of the sharpie solution. They pre-sharpie the disk and you have to do magic electronic stuff to temporarily get it off in order to read the disk. So is this just a coating that can be buffed off, or is it all the way down the plastic?
How stable is that coating once it goes clear, assuming it goes completely clear? I suspect these disks will have a relatively short lifespan.
I can guarantee that the first time I experienced getting home and popping in a DVD that had not been activated would be the last time I buy a DVD from a brick and mortar store. Possibly the last time I bought a DVD, period.
I'm an honest person - I don't steal. I'm tired of being treated like a criminal, tired of being inconvenienced because some people are criminals, tired of the assumption being that I'm guilty. I'm tired of that fucking alarm going off when I walk out of a store and everyone looking at me like I'm a thief because the security tag wasn't deactivated. I'm tired of security guards at stores thinking they have a right to look through my bags. I'm tired of ruining my nails and cutting my fingers thanks to clamshell packaging.
Wanna know how to reduce theft, increase sales and all without making people feel like scumbags? Change your fucking business model to one that addresses the needs consumers actually have. The fact that your store security is for shit is *NOT* *MY* *PROBLEM*. Will Best Buy give me a new stereo if someone breaks into my home and steals mine? No. So why should I pay when they get robbed?
Here's an idea: Have machines at stores that hold spindles and spindles of DVDs and CDs. Have the customer swipe their credit card at the machine and select the movie they want, and then a pre-made DVD (for a "hot" new release) can be spit out, or, if it's something that's a little more obscure/rarely needed, it can be burnt on the spot. Don't have or want to use a credit card? No problem - just take a voucher from a display, go to the check-out line, pay with cash and the clerk can activate the code on the voucher - then the machine will give you what you want when you scan your ticket in.
This would even let there be less packaging and waste. If someone wanted a special collector's edition with all the goodies, keep those in a secure spot and get them when needed.
For small electronics, why not have vending machines like they do for iPods and cellphones now? It annoys me that I have to waste time getting a clerk to open up a cabinet just to get some $30 item I want - and it's a waste of their time, too.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
It won't work because it's attempting -- badly -- to solve the wrong problem.
The thing is, nobody actually shoplifts DVDs anyway! In record stores like HMV, there are already security tags on the DVD boxes on the shelves. In supermarkets like Sainsburys, which carry a smaller range of titles, the boxes on the shelves are empty; scanning the boxes alerts an assistant to bring the actual discs to the till.
What it might deter people from doing is taking a portable computer into a record store, opening a security-tagged DVD box, slotting the disc into their PC, ripping the movie to HDD and leaving the disc and its box in the store; thus not setting off the alarm. But if that sort of attack is happening for real, then maybe your in-store security personnel could do with taking their guide dogs to the vet for a check-up. (And then it's a matter of criminal damage, not theft; you gave their property back to them, although not in the condition in which you found it.) It probably won't deter store staff from ripping off DVDs, since they have access to the machine for activating the disc anyway -- and how's a customer going to tell that the disc went from unplayable to playable as opposed to having been playable all along?
If you want to get a movie to rip off and post all around the internet, it's least embarrassing all round just to pay for it. You can always try for a refund using the line about how it was a present for someone who you didn't know already had it; most places will offer you at least an exchange or credit note (which they aren't obliged to do, if the goods were actually fit for purpose, but there's nothing like tight margins to remind them who pays their wages).
Once the scheme fails -- and it won't succeed, because it cannot succeed; there is no way for it to succeed -- then expect further attacks on the consumer. Even if that just means price rises.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Until someone invents Dark Read Mode.
Ducks/Runs
An electronic chip on plastic. I'm guessing that by creating a small localized EMP shall render the chip useless. I wonder what will happen when people try to clean their DVD's by rubbing the DVD against their clothing. Will this cause enough static charge to try the chip?
PLEASE. One or the other. $400 million, or 400 million dollars.
The one section of TFA that seems to state what the actual problem is goes:
We get no details about how they arrive at this figure but I'm willing to bet that it is inflated because it serves their purposes. A quick look at their web site and especially this page shows that they are quite adept at pulling numbers out of their asses.
Now I'm not saying there is no retail theft but I'm thinking this is not the biggest problem they have to face. They should be concentrating on providing their materials, unencumbered by DRM and at decent prices on the darn Internet instead of trying to protect a dying model. The only thing they will accomplish with that newfangled device is introduce yet another possibility of failure in the delivery chain. The new system will fail, people will get home with DVDs that won't play and will be pissed. This, in turn will drive down the sales of DVDs. So in the end, they will just alienate their customers.
And there's a price to implement this high-tech watchdog which undoubtedly they'll try to pass on to the customer. Again, the customer loses.
Hmm... wait! Maybe we should encourage them to implement this shoddy idea. They'll completely destroy the brick-and-mortar retail business and then will be forced to finally look beyond the old model of moving shiny discs from the manufacturing plant to the home of the customer.
What about a system that works the other way round?
One example
You start up a copying tool such as Nero to copy the whole disk
drive sends a signal to the disk that it's copying parts or all of the disk
the chip in the disk (now being talked to by the drive) says aha you're trying to read some empty part of the disk that isn't normally used by the film therefore you're copying the whole disk
at which point it ether makes the disk too transparent or black rendering it unreadable permanently
another idea might be to store encryption keys in the chip itself
and make the disk transparent when it's being read
but I don't know how permanent the mechanism is for making the disk transparent (if it can be used on a temporary basis / flicked back and forth like a switch)
also it'd probably just be as hackable as Blu Ray (and also requiring the purchase of new drives)
so this wouldn't be much use
but the 1st method if possible could be phased in as part of new drive / disk releases
Yes, law of demand and offer in a free market dictate the price more than cost of production.
But also does the market segmentation.
For any given price there are people who won't buy it but are ready to buy it at a lower price. Or people who could have payed higher anyway.
thus you release different versions of you product with different price tags.
In addition to the normal DVD, you release a "special limited 4-disc edition" for thrice the price (even if each additionnal DVD only costs a couple of to press).
And a special "bargain" edition or compilation package with several movie or anything else that could be sent to the bagrain bin for a couple of $. Maybe for that edition they'll drop the chip for cost reasons (if the chip costs more than a few bucks to produce).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
They're already this high, the execs will just see it as "more money for them".
:(){
You are looking at it from only one side, the consumer's. What you say would be true if there existed only one supplier. When you add more suppliers in free competition, the price is defined by competition among sellers.
You say theft and fraud decrease the margin of profit without raising prices. However, by eroding the profits, it will drive suppliers out of the market and that will raise the prices.
I'm sure when Circuit City re-hires all those employees at a new, lower salary, the employees will promptly make up for it with 'perks.'
Ibid.
As long as the content is copyrighted consumers will not see any savings. If the material came out of copyright the price would drop below a dollar.
Another poster brought up the interesting point that if the product does not face competition from copyright infringement the market may actually bear a higher price.
If stores can unlock the disks, so can hackers. When will they learn?
It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
On Kestrel Wireless's website, they say it may need an external antenna, it sends information back to the "Kestrel network" to give the key to deactivate it, and switches on an element in the media. Plus its all done with RFID.
So either get the right RFID equipment or activate the "element" directly or work at the place you intend to rob. It is also possible to kill the DVD with their technology, even after its deactivated (they say its to disable returned DVDs, its listed under "Benefits").
Who is gonna pay for this new feature, and the machines that deactivate them? I seriously doubt they are willing to take a cut in profit to possibly curb the theft of a less than $1 box of paper, plastic, and aluminum foil. And even if they did, we are still paying for a feature to protect WalMart, Best Buy, etc. and their profits.
Isn't it the retailers job to ensure that Retail Theft is kept to a minimum? Doesn't the retailer lose money when an item is stolen? It would be in the Retailers best interest to put high theft items behind a lockbox, just like razors,walkmans, Games.. Why do they inist the industry loses money from stolen items. The retailer must pay for them. It's the retailer who stupid if they see flagrant theft and do nothing about it. Maybe since it's just a misdemeaner all thiefs should be given a amnesty.
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit!
If anything, this will increase theft. People steal things all the time that they can't use, thinking that they might be able to use them. What this will do is bring the expensive items out from behind the counter to where it's easier for the shoplifter to steal them.
Once the thief gets the disk home and figures out they can't use it, they will either sell the item to a used DVD house that has the enabling tech, or trash the disk.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
NO. I've worked in both retail (haven't we all?) and radio stations while going through college, and man, did we steal a lot of music, movies, video games, etc. and "openly share the information" via the internet without even leaving the building. The radio station was particularly fun, as it was in the Napster days. Whenever we'd get our new crate of CDs that we're not supposed to play on the air until specific dates because the albums won't hit the streets for two months, the station manager would have CD-ripping pizza & beer parties. We'd all grab a computer, start ripping, and add them to his Napster share. Similar situation with the DVDs in retail, but we'd upload them to an FTP server and grab them from home later. No leaving with the physical disc necessary.
All this chip would do is make Assistant Manager Torkleson have to walk 15 feet form his office, deactivate the chip, and rip away. We've all known for years that a majority of this stuff is not coming from people stealing physical media from retail stores, then ripping and posting it on The Net. Are "they" finally giving in to the fact that they can't stop Internet dissemination, and just trying to recoup what they can in easier areas? I think it's a pretty safe bet that poople who steal these movies form retail stores would NOT be willing to spend money on them if they had no other choice. Sure, it would stop the retail theft (eventually, and not totally), but either way they're not getting a sale.
Also, I fear the licensing fee you DVD production companies would be paying for this tech. How about, I don't know, USING THE MONEY FOR R&D TO MAKE YOUR PRODUCTS BETTER instead of fighting pirates who will ALWAYS find a way around your anti-theft mechanisms? Here's a quick route: take the money you'd be spending on the licensing, and just flush it. Better yet, give it to a charity. BETTER YET, why don't you knock a couple bucks off your product in the first place? I don't think too many people are willing to pay $15.99 at Worst Buy for Soul Plane.
Here's a fun thought: can you say compatibility issues? I somehow think crappy DVD players may have trouble reading through that extra "clear" material.
Uh oh. Coffee's wearing off. . .
I'm sorry but there is not a single thing the record business has ever done to make anything cheaper or more available or more usable to the consumer. The record business is the ultimate consumer screwing industry. We were promised cheaper when they switched from vinyl to CD too. All such a chip would accomplish to engineer a way to prevent you from reselling your CD or DVD or worse, expire it so that you can't use it beyond a certain point. The record business is built on restrictions, lawsuits, threats and intimidation.
The only question I have is when they will discard the plastic media completely, rent everything to us as DRM restricted, time limited content on a USB drive and jack up the prices 10%/year? Because you know it's coming and you know they'll blame you for the price increase like they always do.
They won't make it cheaper. Why should they reduce the cost that people will buy it for. Instead they'll probably try to charge extra for the added feature.
AJ Henderson
As I understand the article, a chip on EVERY consumer DVD would be need in order to stem the tide of the "$400 million dollars in losses". My main question is this, wouldn't it cost more than $400 million to put a chip, along with the equipment needed in stores to use the chip, on every DVD in every retail outlet? Just my 2 cents.
Now, you'll be able to buy a non-functioning, mint-condition DVD at a pawn shop!
Please stop stalking me, bro.
I had some old CDs which must have been 4 speed or something, and when they were spun up in a new system (at 48x) they first read (2 secs), and then failed. The drive res-started the spin, I could here it spin up after which there was quite a loud bang.
The CD had come completely to pieces, destroying the optics in the process.
There are TWO lessons from this, though.
(1) Old CDs may not be usable unless you have an old (slow) drive around
(2) Copy protection WILL result in information loss. I copied all the old CDs onto new disks - if they had been copy protected I would have lost that data. Without copy protection you can at least keep up with technological progress..
I personally believe the Borland "treat it as a book" license was the most sensible. As long as only one copy was ever active you were compliant. I know that's a sod to prove, but I've been brought up in the belief that someone has to prove my guilt, not that I have to prove my innocence.
That leads me to a fun question for BSA/FAST: if I have a machine for which I have a logo sticker but no longer a proof of purchase, how can you allege it's a copy if the serial number is not used on any other machine in the world? WGA works against you there..
Insert
This just in, even newer copy protection scheme proposed. The bad news, it requires a blood sample to match the media to your DNA. The good news, blood doner clinic on site to help offset the increased in media prices!
Did anybody else think about the fact that optical media is rotating at high speed and if you put a weight off center of the disc it will WOBBLE and possibly destroy your drive? I know the chip would be very small but I don't think it would take much.
Near as I can tell they're legit. OTOH, they're all nitch titles.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Yes.
No.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
Or it could be. I'm thinking of starting a pool on how long it'll be before some slimeball in Hollywood thinks it'd be a great idea to make this cash register activation only temporary rendering the DVD unusable after a time. Of course, consumers will be prevented from buying a home version of the activator and anyone considering even offering one will be hit with a DMCA-based suit within nanoseconds of announcing their product.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Seriously, many places require the removal of a security tag. This is no different.
"I'm tired of that fucking alarm going off when I walk out of a store and everyone looking at me like I'm a thief because the security tag wasn't deactivated"
I hear ya. I won't stop if the damn things go off. It is not my responsibility if there infernal machine doesn't work..also, I don't stop at the doors to let someone check my bags either. The exception being any company I signed an agreement for them to do so.
What are they going to do? tackle me? physically restrain me? I think not.
"Here's an idea: Have machines at stores that hold spindles and spindles of DVDs and CDs. Have the customer swipe their credit card at the machine and select the movie they want, and then a pre-made DVD (for a "hot" new release) can be spit out, or, if it's something that's a little more obscure/rarely needed, it can be burnt on the spot."
I pitched that idea to some people at a formerly major music chain in 99/00 , they told me that it was a 'nice idea, we'll call you'. Of course they never did.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
What I find interesting, that nobody has mentioned, is the possibility that this may degrade the media?
We know very little about the half-life of DVD media, but enough to know that its "reasonable". However, media that gets activated according to some proprietary process... I highly suspect it will have a lower half-life than a pressed DVD. Perhaps not much less, but I would guess it to be certainly less than a standard DVD.
I suppose, depending on the implementation, it may not be any worse than DVD-/+R disks... which isn't necessarily saying much in its favor. (having lost data to cheap CDR's in the past)
Or will it 'degrade' back to opaque after a while and need to be 're-licensed'?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Its really a surveillance chip designed to report your copy attempts...they are watching us you know. Now where is my tinfoil hat...suddenly I don't even feel safe in my Faraday cage anymore.
This idea has already been tried. Although it did not involve a chip on the disk, DIVX (the original movie rental scheme from Circuit City, not the codec) did allow all of the features of the "business model" you have listed. Studios loved the idea. Consumers did not. The whole system went up in smoke after about a year. In order for a new business model to be successful, it has to be accepted by customers. As far as I know, DIVX has yet to be cracked.
Between not wanting to buy any more movies until the stupid HDDVD/BluRay issue is doen with, this gives another reason not to bother buying any more DVDs.
And of course with the lowered sales, movie studios will scream piracy even louder.
And another thought, what if you mail ordered a movie and they forgot to activate it before shipping? This could kill on line purchasing of movies as who would want to wait for the round trip to get the disc activated. And who pays for shipping if a store forgets to activate your DVD?
Another factor to consider is that decisions about investing in production capacity are made based on the expected profitability of the commodity over the life of the investment. If the actual theft rate is much higher than was expected when the production capacity was built out, that capacity represents a 'sunk cost' which might as well be exploited, even at a lower level of profit. But it will affect future production decisions.
A high expected rate of shopping cart theft and shoplifting leads to less grocery stores in the high-crime areas, which in turn can get away with charging higher prices to a captive customer base. This is a real phenomenon, often mischaracterized by civil-rights groups as racism against the inner-city folks who have to pay those higher prices.
The biggest impact this will have is that it will make it easier for stores to lay the DVDs out in the open, without having to pay for an employee to closely monitor customers for shoplifting. That means that there will be more stores selling DVDs, pushing the equilibrium point towards lower price/higher quantity. And that will indeed reduce the price of DVDs (compared to what it would otherwise be).
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
The way any sensible store selling media has done it for years is to only put CASES on display, you take the case to the paying desk, and they fill it it with a CD/DVD from the rack behind them. There's very few ways you can get around this sort of system.
This has actually become less common in stores that I have seen lately. They seem to be tagging cases with security tags. This doesn't prevent you from just removing the CD from the case and leaving the store with it, but people who just wanted the data, and not the complete product would have just downloaded it anyway.
.sigs are for losers
The real story is that the MPAA wants to be able to disable your DVDs if they don't like you.
Andy Out!
My thoughts went one step further along the lines of Divx. I can see it now - studio big-wigs saying "Why not take it to the next level with timed activation? We could force "relicensing" material after X days." Translation to us - we'd then be back to buying coasters and landfill.
It could also be used to discourage renters from keeping movies past their due date if the disc becomes unplayable when overdue in the traditional rental market.
I wouldn't buy it though.
$ man woman *
-bash:
Well, every consumer losses about 3min on the waiting line per day.
Assuming that everyone goes one day per weekend, that's 156min per year (3 * 52(number of weekends in a year)). That equals to 2.6 hours pr customer.
Let's say the average hour is $40, that's $104 a year per customer.
Now, how many customers can a big store have, US-wide? 100000? Then we are talking about $10,400,000 in consumer's losses per year.
See how easy is to come up with huge annual losses numbers?
This is great, now stores need another piece of equipment they will have to buy. Also, what about down time? If the device that unlocks the DVD is down, no sales. This just hurts the people who are actually buying them.
Ok, so as I read through the nearly 400 posts on this (ok, maybe not read through, but skimmed)... I couldn't help thinking about how the actual "Chip" would work. I would guess, based on the description, it is using some sort of polymer that changes color, or aligns molecules or something based on the "electrical current" sent through the film (liquid crystal?). This brings up MANY questions in my mind, the most important being:
How long does this film stay transparent?
CDs and DVDs (and I'd assume the new format optical discs) have this little problem, they last indefinitely. The producers of the content are basically giving you a licence to view, listen, install and sometimes even make copies of their content virtually FOREVER. What if this "film" they apply has a wonderful side-effect of rendering the disc useless unless it is periodically "re-activated" (or re-purchased)?
Another point: BlueRay and HD-DVDs have a very THIN margin for material between the surface of the disc and the data layer. How thick does this layer need to be? Will it de-laminate over time? Will it scratch easily? and again, will it eventually grow dark spots due to UV, physical pressure, RF energy from cellphones, etc?
$400,000,000 in loss due to theft... what is the cost of this equipment for a nation-wide retail chain? Will it be Internet dependant? RFIDs can be unique much like a product activation key for software... will there be an easy "algorithm" for deactivating the chip that could be discovered... or do they validate with a central server? Can this link be exploited/rendered useless for such a period of time that the industry suffers?
Could the manufacturer of the chips hold the industry "ransom" after enough of the devices were implemented, unless they agree to pay an exorbanant amount of money for the new chips (never thought about inventory going on strike). Or even the manufacturer revoking activation keys for all the products they have shipped to a certian retail chain...
There are a lot of questions that this brings up, mostly about how this technology could be exploited.
If I were a retail chain I would be primarily concerned with REDUCING the complexity of the devices and INCREASING the chance that they will work for the customer.
In related news, a cash register checkout unit was stolen from a local chain store.
Duh. How long before people start stealing the activation equipment? I'm surprised there aren't more of those clothing tag removers floating around... Or how about "my buddy works at Wallers, give me the DVD in a paper envelope and he'll activate it for you."
I've taken back clothing because they honestly forgot to remove the tag; with the reeipt, no problem, they removed it - but then I'm older, dressed middle class (white) and don't look like a criminal (except for those downloads, I guess).
Also consider - if you're pushing the HD-DVD or Blu-Ray product, why wouldn't you want to make regular DVDs as inconvenient as possible?
Much as I'm not a huge fan of cumbersome protection methods, this one doesn't seem too bad and might actually be useful for some things. While I haven't heard about huge issues in regards to movie DVD's being stolen, I've regularly seen shelled cases of game DVD's at WalMart etc (the DVD is removed, thus circumventing the anti-theft RFID on the case, which is left empty on a shelf somewhere). Since your average game is about 2-3x the cost of a movie, this might be somewhat useful as a protection against "thieving kids" in that market.
Wouldn't that make your dvd-player sound like a moped when trying to accelerate the disc? I guess that would add a DTS-like sound to movies such as Ghost Rider
That is all beside the point of what we should be focusing on. Media companies do not have a clue about the internet. The media companies that sell movies in stores and have contracts to distribute content, video , music should be sued by anyone their shareholders and anyone who's content they are contracted to promote and sell if "it is not profitable to keep the media on shelf-space in a brick and mortar store and they do not distribute the content though digital means. The sum of potential sales on content that can be fit into a physical store is less then what they don't have the shelf space for. Then they have the galls to tell their artists, The labels have a conflict of interest. Namely it would make more sense for artists if labels and content distributors would actually act in a way that would help artists make money instead only acting primarily in a way that would make themselves make money. And they are blowing money because they are scared and don't have any balls to embrace the future. If you agree mod this up. Please repost this to any story that is missing the boat because as most of them are. The story should be look at after so many years they still do not have a clue. -- Stanislaw Nokodem Marcinkowski
So if they pave the way with a "chip" which turns clear when the disk is "authorized", how soon until they can order your DVD player to "unauthorized" something? Or how about the return of Divx (the rental service, not the video format)? And the real kicker: This paves the way to prevent copying of the material. If the laser in your DVDR/W drive is a certain wavelength for burning (it has to be a different wavelength than the laser for reading, obviously) the chip can become opaque when it's placed in a data drive. Or it could store information as a key and your new player will refuse to use it unless your DVDR/W disc has the matching chip.
While the obvious solution is to mod the player, something twofold like the wavelength attack combined with the requirement for this chip to be present on the disc and matching the movie would stem piracy quickly. But the real question is: Can the media giants convince people to buy MOAR CRAP after the blu-ray and HDDVD shootout?
Proper accounting. Every single download is NOT a sale. Every single illegal purchase in China is NOT a sale.
If you're product is not available in China and someone downloads it, you can make a case for piracy, but it's not theft as they can not buy your product. Unless you have the product available to that person with out having to import it then the person buying that music is not stealing the cost of the dvd from you.
There's a million of these little mistakes that the MPAA and RIAA don't want to fix because we'll realize it's far less of a problem than they can claim when they shout about 400 million dollars in loss. I'm sure when the tax man comeths that number is a little different, don't you think?
So they get you coming and going, eh? Can't make a back-up because you're only paying for the content...but you have to pay full price to get a new disk if yours is damaged and unplayable. This silliness is protected by law, and Americans have a proud history of ignoring unjust laws.
Blar.
the cost of manufacture of these disks is more, which no doubt will be passed onto the consumer, even though it is of no benefit ( and may even be a disadvantage ) to the consumer.
Er, I think you have your economics a bit wrong. Of course vendors have to figure in their best guesses on theft into their equations...it's part of the cost of doing business, just like paying for utilities or rent -- except it's a little less predictable. They'd be irrational to do otherwise.
We may not notice the differences in price as consumers because most retailers are probably figuring on the same levels of loss -- everyone's prices adjust accordingly. Also, some prices are standardized nationally, like books. But if you compare prices between low and higher crime areas, you'll definitely see a difference for many goods.
"Could this help to bring the prices down on DVD games and movies?"
No. Even if it can help prevent theft, the people who no longer lose revenue from that theft will keep the extra revenue for themselves; it's not 'new' revenue, it's revenue that's been unfairly taken from them in the past.
If it can be manufactured for a reasonable cost, it will sell. All that matters is whether people (non tech savvy management) think it will help. And as usual they will be easily tricked.
And as we all know, any help it does provide won't last for long. This is something that would be activated at several locations in every store that sells discs. That means there will be thousands of the devices in most cities of reasonable size for those interested to study.
It shouldn't take long to realize they were designed with the principle of security through obscurity (could you see anything else implemented for this use?) and defeat can be achieved by a 6 year old with a battery and a few paper clips.
Oh, and when that becomes the case, theft will increase again due to the relaxation of previous restrictions and safeguards. Retailers will probably up their prices a little bit to cover a new method of theft.
Of course, I expect two things to happen:
- Sudden availability bootleg unlockers, or development of homebrew techniques or equipment (I don't remember the last time I had to go back to the shop to have a security device that was left in/on a DVD or CD package removed - old hard drive magnets are useful)
- A sudden decrease in retail thefts, and an increase in home break-ins... because all the discs in private homes will be unlocked and easily saleable.
So, thank you very much for this technology... it has the potential to save retailers vast sums of money and generate new business for glaziers everywhere.