Hollywood planning to embedd RFID tads in to DVDs

Galen

Here a new twist from Hollywood, a new measure to prevent dvd copying. Conveniently it will also prevent dvd purchases from the US.


http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2164309/embedded-dvd-chip-fights-piracy

DVD chips 'to kill illegal copying'

Embedded radio transmitter chips to track movie, music and software discs
Simon Burns in Taipei, vnunet.com 15 Sep 2006
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DVDs will soon be tracked with embedded radio transmitter chips to prevent copying and piracy, according to the company which makes movie discs for Warner, Disney, Fox and other major studios.

The technology, which can also be used for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs, will allow movie studios to remotely track individual discs as they travel from factories to retail shelves to consumers' homes.

Home DVD players will eventually be able to check on the chip embedded in a disc, and refuse to play discs which are copied or played in the 'wrong' geographical region, the companies behind the technology expect.

"This technology holds the potential to protect the intellectual property of music companies, film studios, gaming and software developers worldwide," said Gordon Yeh, chief executive of Ritek Corporation.

Ritek is the world's largest DVD maker, and its U-Tech subsidiary will make the discs.

U-Tech and IPICO, the company behind the RFID chips used in the discs, announced today that production of the 'chipped' DVDs will begin at U-Tech's main plant in Taiwan.

U-Tech's global network of factories stamps out some 500 million pre-recorded DVDs and CDs a month for major movie studios, recording studios and video games companies.

After ironing out bugs in the manufacturing process, U-Tech will work with major movie studios on a large-scale test of an RFID-based supply chain management process at its manufacturing plant and distribution centre in Australia.

RFID readers will then be built-in to home DVD players to extend the anti-copying technology into homes as part of a digital rights management system.

U-Tech described this as the "real end game" for the chip-on-disc technology, which would "eliminate optical disc piracy in the entertainment and IT sectors" .

IPICO claims that its RFID tags can be read from at least six metres away, and at a rate of thousands of tags per minute. The passive chips require no battery, as they are powered by the energy in radio waves from the RFID reader.

"I have envisioned using RFID to improve product visibility and enhance security in the optical disc industry for some time," said Yeh.

"Launching the chip-on-disc system has made this dream a reality and holds the potential to protect the intellectual property of music companies, film studios, gaming and software developers worldwide."

Gordon Westwater, president of IPICO, added: "[This is the] first step towards new international standards to safeguard optical media, and the subsequent adoption of the chip-on-disc concept as a global standard."

U-Tech Australia, where the project will undergo a large scale trial, did not reply today to vnunet.com's request for comment on the new embedded RFID chip process and the precise schedule for its rollout.

Press relations staff at U-Tech's office in Taiwan refused to provide more information about the technology.

Red Alert

Keep your current DVD player in tip top condition then, you wouldn't want to be replacing it.

As a Unix (rather than Windows) user, Hollywood's carryon is really frustrating. Allofmp3.com shows that people will actually BUY non-Digital Restricted music.

ircoha

About bloody time, anything to reduce the number of hawkers in the restuarants in Europe selling all that sh1t.

Unfortunatly it wont stop the ones made from vid cams in the cinema

kjt

This seems a bit freaky. I'm not a conspiracy theorirst by nature but seems more like a way of being able to track people too.

ixoy

I'm most concerned about their desire to stop region-free disc playing. So in the future I'd be stuck having to buy only over-priced R2 content, costing twice as much with about half the features? It's not like I intend on pirating the discs, only getting the best available option with money still going to the studios.

Absolutely infuriating.

Capt'n Midnight

their previous attempt was self-destructing DVD's
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EZ-D
though in fairness that did have one advantage, for rentals you didn't have to bring them back.

One of the fundamentals of copyright and patent was that in return for a monopoly for the first years, it would become public domain after the monopoly period had expired. This would seem to be two fingers to that.

On Dave Fanning's show they pointed out that the ratio of P2P to legal downloads was 40:1 , this is seems to be a case of bolting the stable door or of the industry telling the minority that actually pay for stuff that it doesn't trust them.

Then there is the little issue of costs, at present for the chinese industires who make the entry level DVD players the most expensive bit is the license to use region coding - up to 40% of what it costs to make the player ! I can see a similar cost/TAX if they add RFID readers.

It's not like they are going to had out free RFID players , it's not like they are going to subsidise the cost to the manufacutring industry, it's not like they can get away with insisting that DVD's players will only play RFID DVD's.

So it's more cost for the consumer and more money to the RFID gear patent holders and suppliers, with no distinct advantage to us.

And it won't stop copies of DVD's being made, all it will do is make it harder for people to shop around for grey imports of 100% genuine-royalty-to-hollywood-DVD's and make pirate DVD's a tiny bit more attractive.

And unless they encrypt the DVD they won't hinder copying as the prirates will just buy a RFID enabled player and rip and re-encode just like they have always done with the various regions. Anyone got any stats on how successful making china a separate region has been to combat piracy ? because that was the acid test.

Bottom line, if the entertainment industry sold it's products at a price that most people thought fair there wouldn't be such a market for pirates. Also as I've said before, such stuff comes out of disposable income. So the studios are after a finite slice of pie, does anyone have every DVD and Album they would like or just the ones they can justify the price of ? If they dropped prices then maybe people would spend the same amount and buy more albums or maybe they would spend more because "it's only the price of a pint" and seem to be more value than other disposable income purchases.

Guy:Incognito

kjt wrote:

This seems a bit freaky. I'm not a conspiracy theorirst by nature but seems more like a way of being able to track people too.

Only if they carry their dvd collection in their pockets.

Fenster

Its like all their measures, it only hurts the average joe as opposed to pirates/geeks.

jimmycrackcorm

I was just thinking today that groups like U2 should allow theirmusic to be purchased very very cheaply.It'snot like they have to recoup massive costs and they could achieve huge sales. It would be like the ryanair effect...