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15 Sep 2006
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.
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Do you agree?
It too will be hacked!
If these chips were to come out onto dvd's then a player will have to read this chip to allow play back....but who is gonna be smart enough to remove the transmitter in the player that will read the chip in order to play. ME! Thats who. I will find the transmitter in the dvd player and remove it. And then I will patch over allowing the player to play whatever it wants to play in that format...TATA DUMBASSES!
Posted by: john doe of america 10 Feb 2007
VCR
This reminds me of when they put a chip in vcr's to avoid pirate copying (that worked, remove the chip). Now stupid's you convert the DVD to DVX and if you're really good you convert it back...problem fixed?
Posted by: Johnny 12 Nov 2006
More useless protection
WOW - I really look forward to my overseas travel when I have to explain that the CD/DVD's I am carrying are really mine and not some pirate copy because they are out of their 'designated' region. Does this mean I will have to keep the receipts with me at all times for all of my optical media now. Maybe I could get an 'authentic purchaser' barcode tatoo'd on my forehead to prevent any unnecessary hassles from big brother.
Posted by: Oldersox 07 Nov 2006
Digital World
When we took the step from analog to digital music, the control of the media was gone. The music in digital form will always be found in the cd or dvdplayer. If you have a device checking this or that, this device can always be fooled.
Posted by: Engineer 21 Oct 2006
tch
Hmm, yes, another idea on how to waste billions on something that will be useless within a month! Instead of this pointless junk, why not invest in making all discs region free, then there will be no need for piracy at all!!
Posted by: Z 25 Sep 2006
Who will bother with DVD's anyway
With Movies being available on request almost instantly on TV, on your computer and even on your mobile phone. I cannot see more than a few years left for personal DVD collections.
Posted by: mongrel1999 22 Sep 2006
killer chips
Since OUR representatives have already been bought and paid for and god only knows how many federal judges are on the take?? So, for those who dont think it will work>> REPLACE ALL OF FREEKING DC and each state house needs new blood... THEY HAVE ALL BEEN BOUGHT AND PAID FOR.. reason for my saying this??? SONY is now the biggest player in the new deal (they got favorable decisions when they were making hardware) NOW, however SONY and others have stakes in the very institutions they fought.. HOW many of you are rocket scientist?? 100% as it dont take a rocket scientist to see our elected reps only represent those in media production... Digital melenim copy right stuff takes every right we had away from us... rewritten by the MEDIA companies.. Fair charges will kill piracy more quickly than any new laws.. LETS SECURE OUT BORDERS from terrorist instead of playing games with americans. IT US TO BE WE COULD GET ANYTHING FROM CABLE for a small fee.. now all movies are so used by the time they get to HBO they JUST SUCK due to their extreem OLD age.. OH!!! so, its not the media companies who screwed americans... it was your elected officials (who passed a spy bill for RIAA and MPAA)
Posted by: Not ME 22 Sep 2006
20 feet away!?!?!?!?
Hmmmm.. can be read from 6 meters away.. 20 feet?! I doubt any one would be willing to buy one of these discs if they new even the slightest about what could be done with them... its pretty scary...
Posted by: nick 21 Sep 2006
crap
they will never get this thing off the ground and running because new products have flaws who's going to pay forit all.. we most likely but to make it afordable they will have to cut corners and this is were the problem is...
Posted by: rolf reindl 20 Sep 2006
Revelation 13:16-18
Man...soon they'll be putting these things in our right hands, or in our foreheads.
Posted by: Anonymous 20 Sep 2006
New surveillance ?
So they´ll be able to track you if you have a dvd or other media on you ? That seems rather invasive, and the fact that they can monitor your activities in your own home also seem to break with some basic freedoms.
Posted by: Anonymous 19 Sep 2006
Not gonna happen
The article's a little fuzzy, but it looks like they're trying to stop us from copying or playing what we buy outside of their wishes. We'll never let it happen. There will always be new technology for copying and listening or viewing.
Posted by: ken 19 Sep 2006
RFID Hack
Like all RFID technology, someone will figure out the RFID tag and then you will able to right your own RFID onfo on a tag and place it near your RFID enabled player and watch the copy of the DVD you made from the original without the RFID. How will the player know the difference???
Posted by: Tux 19 Sep 2006
What a joke!
All I can say is good luck, if they succeed doing this crap we're one step closer to an Orwellian 1984 society.
Posted by: DJ 18 Sep 2006
I give it a day
Do they really expect this to last? I give it a day tops before it's cracked. Hell, they'll probably have leaked, cracked versions on torrent index sites days in advance. The industries are fighting a long-lost battle. Piracy can't be stopped.
Posted by: shetenshisenshi 18 Sep 2006
Nope...
This will never fly. It's an invasion of privacy... I?m going to put a chip in my socks so I can find out where they disappear to when I put them in the dryer.
Posted by: Jon 18 Sep 2006
confused
If they are going to do this, why wouldn't they chose an RFID system that is compatible with what Wal-Mart is already using?
Posted by: anon 18 Sep 2006
Speaking of Hacks
How come no one has mentioned the possibility that some one other than the manufacturer could possibly track these DVDs
Posted by: WeAREnotStupid 18 Sep 2006
HAHA
just you wait....this story will drizzle out about 6 months from now....there is no possible way to beat piracy in this world! LoL
Posted by: Adam 18 Sep 2006
oh noez
So you mean instead of burning copied ISOs to DVD, consumers will now have to just play them directly from their Movix box or patched XBOX? That will really be rough (on the DVDR industry).
Posted by: hapbt 18 Sep 2006
legacy
What about al the DVD's I already own?
Posted by: Mark 18 Sep 2006
So what if I rewrite the RFID chip?
With so many RFID chips being used I plan on getting a writer. Should be pretty interesting.
Posted by: Luke 18 Sep 2006
it won't last...
Even if they do that, the DVD player will have to bypass the check on home-made movies otherwise people will be mad when their copy of baby cousin Annie's birthday doesn't play. That will allow hackers to compromise the check on other DVDs as well. Overall, if it happens, I give the system one week before somebody hacks it.
Posted by: G-ray 18 Sep 2006
Intellectual Property, too funny!
Tell me exactly what is "intellectual" about that vast majority of Hollywood's "property"!?! : )
Posted by: Anonymous 18 Sep 2006
Sounds like market suicide
If anything this sounds like an excellent way to halt market diffusion of BlueRay and HDDVD. So what exactly will they do with RFID at home? Lock your DVD collection to one DVD player? Prevent you from bringing a DVD over to a friends house to watch together? Sounds like an excellent way to encourage hacking and black markets. And what are the real chances that places like China that have pervasive pirating don't have backdoors or can throw government resources into piracy as they did for CDs and DVDs. Even today's region coding and CSS can be bypassed without even hacking them.
Posted by: mantra 17 Sep 2006
Sheesh
They just love spying. Imagine what would happen if someone cracked the RFID tags and was able to track this tags all over the world? We would be royally screwed. The more they try to spy on us to protect themselves, the more the people will hate them and the more mess they will create. 90% of every form of software, music, and movies sold in China is a pirate. If they want to stop piracy, start by nuking China.
Posted by: MaJoR 17 Sep 2006
Nonsense
This is an opportunistic company trying to extract some cash from movie studios for an absurdly unworkable solutions. RFID tags as a means to track the DVDs around manufacturing/storage facilities are easily defeatable by wrapping the dvd in tinfoil. As for embedding a reader in home DVD players, why the hell would manufacturers take on that extra cost? And what exactly would the dvd player do with that information? Nothing to see here, folks. Vaporware.
Posted by: Misha 17 Sep 2006
How about Privacy
I sure won't buy any, I don't want them to be able to track me to my own private residence and if I borrow out the disk.. No Thanks..
Posted by: anonomous 17 Sep 2006
New Dvd player
So now they are going to make purchase a new dvd player? Dont think so...
Posted by: Noman 17 Sep 2006
or...
you could always run rca out into a vcr and then recapture it into the computer, or better yet a dvd burning vcr.
Posted by: j 16 Sep 2006
Bah...
I can envision a chipped chipped DVD player... have a little transmitter that can fake rfid transactions, download the rfid content as simple as a .nfo... Or just surgically remove the whole check... Why must they always contemplate solving the wrong problem...
Posted by: Axi0n 16 Sep 2006
Futile...
FACT: If it reaches your eyes and ears, it can be re-recorded without DRM to be played back freely. Solution: Stop wasting money on copy protection schemes and realize a "stolen copy" does NOT equal a lost sale. Invest this saved money into making a better product at a lower cost to the consumer so they will be more likely to purchase it. This is just good business sense, but the suits just have their eyes closed on this one...
Posted by: Randy 16 Sep 2006
useless
why would i buy one of these players? my dvd player works just fine. i also enjoy burning home movies to dvd for friends and family, how would that work geniuses?
Posted by: CNY 16 Sep 2006
This is not a good technology
how about tagging rapists and child molesters? Give them chip implants? What good is technology if it's going to penalize people who actually BOUGHT the DVD? If a person bought a DVD and it got stolen, they donated it, gave it away, or sold it in a garage sale, and the person who buys it takes it outside the so-called geographical location?
Posted by: Dark 16 Sep 2006
Bastards
I don't even care, if they put transmitter chips in my fking DVDs, I will never buy a DVD, CD, Blu-Ray Disc, HD-DVD, or anything else. I reccomend torrentspy.com
Posted by: Rizzla 16 Sep 2006
Same old same old
Worthless. "region encoding" movies. We've all seen it fail. there's absolutely no point other than to fill the medias coffers as resale outside a particular region is suddenly impossible -- the technical hurdles will be jumped very quickly as there's no incentive for a person to restrict their viewing of this content. Ritek will get rich, the MPAA is clearly not understanding the real push here.
Posted by: T 16 Sep 2006
Legal Issues
Ok, does this not strike anyone as illegal. I don't want a movie company to know exactly where my house is, or where I am going with my films or what films I have in my collection! While the range of the chips is limited, there are still methods where the certain gear that can track the signal and collect information such as what else you have on screen your pc screen on the carrier wave... (Tempest). This is the next move in the big brother culture, they monitor what and where you watch your stuff! THIS SHOULD NOT HAPPEN! LET PUT OUR FEET DOWN ON THIS ONE NOW!!!
Posted by: MR W Evans (UK) 16 Sep 2006
Do you realize how stupid this sounds?
Okay, I can maybe see this working (for a period of time anyway) for BR and HDDVD, but DVD's? No freaking way. There are waaaaay to many non rfid enabled DVD players out there to even remotely make this possible. And what if manufacturers (especially the smaller ones) refuse to put the technology in their players? Eventually the movie studios will look back and say "what a waste of money that was!" Why in the world, would you back a technology that ends up costing more to manufacture and impliment than you will reap due to the movies not being able to be pirated in what will eventually be less than 10% of the install base? Stupid... just plain freaking stupid.
Posted by: GothicX 16 Sep 2006
it won't fly
For the simple reason that there are millions of people like me who will refuse to purchase any media that has this technology in it. While preventing illegal copying is in the industry's interest, I will not allow them to pursue that goal at the cost of having my property tracked by rabid media companies or have it not work because I take it on vacation with me. It is none of their business where I or the products go once I have bought them. I consider the whole tracking scheme an obscene invasion of privacy and not something I would trust any corporation as greedy as these with the power to do. Hollywood only turns out maybe two movies a year I would bother to waste money on in the theater,and as far as owning a DVD - maybe one every other year. Music I don't need to buy - that's what radio is for. And if a piece of software were to not work because of where I am at any given time, that makes the sound of a software company committing suicide - no one in this increasingly open source world would put up with that. There's no software worth the trouble.
Posted by: Gerry 16 Sep 2006
Something Rotten Here...
I have heard something similar to this before - some time ago. It smells like someone trying to sell an unproven proprietary DRM technology to a rightly dubious Hollywood. In particular, region codes. Users hate them and Hollywood is slowly beginning to realize that the region coding scheme is little more than a foot-shooting exercise of monumental proportions.
Posted by: Cranston Snord 16 Sep 2006
Amen
So is the life of reverse-engineering. They also said the Titanic could not sink.
Posted by: Maxwolf 16 Sep 2006
Waste of time
Honest to God, I don't know why they keep trying. You have to give up on the idea that you can protect things like DVDs. It only takes one person with the time, ability, and motivation to crack this, and it only takes one person to perform the crack on each title.
Posted by: Wakko Warner 16 Sep 2006
SCREW, THAT
Well, thats me ditching dvds, its just another reason to download movies off the net. As far as im concerned i should be able to put my movies onmy prtable movie player with out tip toeing around some stupid rfid, this means new and more expensive dvds players, what are they going to do FORCE us to buy a new one? No thanks. This will be hacked in the first day its not like with a games console, EVERYONE likes dvds
Posted by: Robert 16 Sep 2006
vcd
How would someone be able to play a dvd that has their own home videos?
Posted by: stemple 16 Sep 2006
And the privacy?
So, where are my privacy? if i listen a cd in my car, WHY THEY CAN KNOW where and where i go? WHY they must track my movements? just an abuse... wait for legal actions against that
Posted by: Charlie 16 Sep 2006
Same Old Story
As usual the technorati will disable the RFIDs, crack the hardware encryption, or do whatever it takes for any particular flavour of Big Company restrictions and within days (hours) we?ll be back to square one except for the fact that we?ll all be paying more for this ?protection?. They just don?t seem to get the digital age ? why force us into unworkable region restrictions in the first place? I used to live 5 miles from a region boundary, and travelled regularly between three regions with my laptop ? who the hell thinks they have the right to dictate what locally available media I can and can?t watch on my laptop? More power to the hackers and crackers who give us the digital freedoms we deserve ? and if the cost is the US film industry itself ? well, I can live with that ? there?s plenty of smaller production companies giving us better material than Hollywood ? it?s time they had the chance ? and the great thing about our Internet is that they now have the means of distribution too.
Posted by: Peter 15 Sep 2006
Invasion of privacy
If this proceeds I believe it will be fought in court, an rfid tag that is trackable will violate privacy rights, no one has the right to track at will, some one else. They are treading on dangerous ground. Plus how will it discern, my own private movie??
Posted by: CID 15 Sep 2006
No right to enter my home
Sorry, but the MPAA or the RIAA has no right to enter my home with a warrant. Once I purchase the CD or DVD, it is mine. I do not copy disc's. I have purchased all 200+ of my DVD's. I can't wait for the legal issues this starts.
Posted by: Mark 15 Sep 2006
tracking device
Isn't a tracking device illegal, don't you need a warrant from the police to track something.
Posted by: Sam 15 Sep 2006
Ever heard of privacy?
Oh, thats great. Just what we need, companies tracking DVDs to our houses. Somebody has got to stop these maniacs!
Posted by: Myself 15 Sep 2006
maybe
Since they are rf waves mabe the microwave oven can fry them.
Posted by: peelee 15 Sep 2006