Give Your DVD Player The Finger 620
sebFlyte writes "Wired is reporting on some scary new DRM tech being developed. From the article: 'At the store, someone buying a new DVD would have to provide a password or some kind of biometric data, like a fingerprint or iris scan, which would be added to the DVD's RFID tag. Then, when the DVD was popped into a specially equipped DVD player, the viewer would be required to re-enter the data.'"
This is a non-starter (Score:5, Insightful)
Couple quotes from TFA:
Unfavorable bovine comparisons notwithstanding, these two statements sum up nicely why this will never happen:
Add to all this the increased costs of manufacturing the 'specially equipped DVD players' mentioned in the article, and it's easy to see why this idea is a non-starter.
Invasive technologies... (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope.
wow..just wow (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would anyone buy this? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is nuts.
Another doomed idea (Score:2, Insightful)
So... (Score:3, Insightful)
Right. You know, I'm all for worrying about my rights, but I think, at least in this, we are being far to paraniod for our own good. And in the process, giving your average walmart worker far too much credit.
I hope you don't have kids. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is crazy talk, really, and really prevents the fair use rights we have now (loaning to friends, etc.)
Why don't they just sell tickets every time we want to watch a DVD? "They're $2 cheaper per viewing than going to the theater!"
This would kill the industry (Score:5, Insightful)
I, for one, would never purchase a product that required this level of security for my home entertainment. The only time I would consider giving my fingerprint or some other biometric data would be for a HIGH security job.
I don't trust any person at electronics stores with my SS#, why would I trust them with more personal information?I wouldn't worry about this (Score:3, Insightful)
There's no compelling reason for consumers to agree to even more useless encumberance than we already face with CSS, Macrovision and region coding.
Re:This will never work (Score:5, Insightful)
Libraries (Score:4, Insightful)
DIVX (Score:3, Insightful)
This isn't a problem (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:user friendly (Score:3, Insightful)
This will ENCOURAGE piracy (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, everyone will have and regularly use a DVD copier. And, once you're copying it for yourself, what's the difference if you make a few extra copies? Hey, while I'm sitting here, Aunt Martha might enjoy this movie too.....
Evil Researchers (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Gifts? Online purchases? (Score:5, Insightful)
However, it may yet be useful in securing workprints and pre-release copies. That would decrease bootlegging. A workprint of Star Wars III hit the BitTorrent networks yesterday. You can be sure George is looking to employ this technology when he makes his next Indiana Jones.
Handicapp Accessable? (Score:1, Insightful)
This won't work: (Score:3, Insightful)
On second thought, I hope the MPAA does this, so a huge class-action lawsuit against the MPAA is filed on behalf of all the people who can't use it. And another class-action suit for all the sellers who loose business because of it. And another by the EFF or whoever on behalf of consumers in general. We could be looking at several billion dollars here, all told.
Re:This is a non-starter (Score:2, Insightful)
And the time it takes is roughly ten seconds:
(1) Locate the digital output port in your DVD player.
(2) Plug said output port to your computer's frame grabber input port.
(3) Press "record", then press "play".
The unprotected data stream must come out of the DVD player, otherwise the TV can't get it. And if the TV can get it, a frame grabber card can.
All this kind of harrasment does is make more people get pirated stuff. Like CD copy protection: store-bought CDs don't work on my mp3 player, so I never buy CDs any more.
It will only hurt the legal DVD watchers. (Score:2, Insightful)
1) What if you have a family?
2) What if you die? (or no more iris)
3) What if you want to sell your DVD?
4) What if you forget your password?
5) What if...
There are millions of "what if" type situations. Also, while my grandmother is trying to figure out how to get the DVD player to work... a million kids will be downloading the movie via the internet.
Nope. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's time to return to my little library of books, which are light, were cheap, are deeper than DVDs or CDs, and don't accuse me every time I interact with them.
Re:only for previews. (Score:5, Insightful)
THEY WANT TO PUT YOU IN JAIL BY DEFAULT!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
They need to make things EASIER and more attractive to the consumer, not less!
If a restrictive, half-baked scheme like this went through, it'd be easier to buy the damn media, and then download a cracked copy off your favorite p2p so you can easily view the movie you paid for on your laptop.
Re:This is a non-starter (Score:2, Insightful)
I think it would be the manufacturers who would kill this... In the same way they make DVD players that can be made region free by typing in a 'secret code' they will have a bypass code that was there for 'hardware testing' and they 'forgot' to remove it
Re:This is a non-starter (Score:5, Insightful)
This could easily be employed by the MPAA as a smokescreen. Say they want to implement X, a restrictive DRM scheme.
They publically announce that they are going to "adopt" this fingerprint idea or some other draconian, over-the-top, Big-Brother DRM technology and attempt to push it down people's throats. They wait for the inevitable backlash, and say, "We're sorry for trying to do that. We'll use this less invasive DRM scheme X instead."
This story is not about protecting digital rights. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Gifts? Online purchases? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no way the public would touch this with a barge pole - I can see it being useful for oscar pre-releases etc. but if the firm that came up with the idea thought it had any mass-market potential they need their heads examining.
Re:This won't work: (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't forget to bring the Americans with Disabilities Act into the fray. How is a quadriplegic supposed to use this?
Wouldn't this kill Netflix & Blockbuster? (Score:1, Insightful)
Hey, that sounds good. I hope they do this.
Re:Gifts? Online purchases? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why would anyone buy this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's do a thought experiment. Suppose the crack man, having a local monopoly, develops a new form of the drug that requires one of his fancy hi-tech crack pipes. Do you suppose that all the addicts will just pay the extra money indefinitely, so he can get richer? That another dealer might not be tempted to offer an alternative?
Those of us who are old enough will remember "copy protected" software from the early days of the PC. That died a well-deserved death before too long, because it was only effective for giving legitimate customers a pain in the ass.
Re:This is a non-starter (Score:2, Insightful)
The analog is also kind of protected (macrovision).
Anyway, in the (near) future, all the chain from the source (DVD player) to the screen (plasma, LCD,
Thick as theives (Score:3, Insightful)
You treat most people like theives. More accurately, you treat them like they could be thieves. You lock your car and your house, because you don't trust people you haven't met. When you rent a car or a movie they go to great lengths to assure you'll give it back. You assume people are thieves because it's easier than getting your stuff back later.
When you say "treat them like thieves", the image is of throwing somebody in jail. That's not the case here.
I gotta admit, in this case the cliche looks perilously close to accurate. Taking fingerprints IS treating somebody more like a thief than a potential thief. That's a bit of a coincidence (just because it's one way to take an ID used in both processes, but they're not fingerprinting you like a thief gets fingerprinted.) But it's still incredibly, and overly, invasive.
My gist is that I don't think of DRM as "treating somebody like a thief" any more than I think of locking your house as treating people like thieves. This plan is stupid, and I'm sure not buying it, and it would never happen because the technology would be wildly inconvenient and insufficiently accurate.
But I've happily bought DRMed songs from Apple and I'd buy DRMed movies. When you buy a DRMed song you're giving them a "fingerprint", just one that's tied to your computer rather than a permanent part of you (which is the real stupid part of this plan.) I'd prefer non-DRMed ones, just in case I wanted to make a backup or use it in a different medium, but I sure understand why they don't want to see their material given away for free over the Internet, and go to some lengths to ensure it. Fingerprints are stupid, but I'm not opposed to a less invasive plan.
Re:Invasive technologies... (Score:4, Insightful)
Besides that, how would you give such a crippled DVD as a gift? Or order one online, for that matter.
Re:Gifts? Online purchases? (Score:3, Insightful)
How is being forced to sit through 15 minutes of previews, many for DVDs that I already own, every time I insert a disc unintrusive?
Re:they tried that (Score:3, Insightful)
They tried to hire me, I worked out the scheme they were proposing during the telephone call with the recruiter and started laughing.
The scheme was idiotic for four reasons. First there was simply no way that the rest of the industry was going to allow Circuit City a retail monopoly over the players or the content. Secondly the entire industry had tooled up to launch DVD which was set to become their biggest bonanza since the launch of CD, the Circuit City scheme meant launching a totally new standards war after the standard had launched. Third it was not even profitable for the studios, the DVDs had to sell at a discount to unrestricted DVDs but most people are unlikely to pay to watch the content a second time. Fourth, people want to collect DVDs and the copyright restriction meant that their collection would be worthless.
I don't see how this new scheme would be any more acceptable, it is idiotic to think that consumers would accept biometric identification to watch a DVD, they don't need to do that today there is no way that they would buy a player or content with that feature as long as unrestricted content was available. The legacy base of DVD players means that there is no chance that the studios could take unrestricted content off sale.
The industry is starting to get concerned about what happens in a few years time when the DVD patents expire and manufacturers start producing official players that are not zone locked and do not have navigation restrictions. Their current hope is that everyone will have upgraded to blue ray or whatever by then, I don't think so. Very few people have HDTV today and very few people care as much about high definition as techy types think.
Sure I would like a better picture on my TV, but not if I have to give a DNA blood sample and pay five times as much for the content.
I seem to recall that Neal Stephenson parodied this type of attitude in Snow Crash, the federal govt. workers who have to give blood samples to log into their computers etc.
Technologists can try treat people like machines but people don't have to let them.
Re:Zonk Gives You The Finger (Score:2, Insightful)
Nobody is going to accept jumping through these kinds of hoops just to watch a movie at home, and the industry knows it.
This is just another "story" Slashdot is running so they can get 500+ comments railing against yet another feared invasion of privacy, jacking up ad hit counts.
Watch, now I'll get six replies of tin-foil hat types saying "I don't know... with that asshole Bush in office, I wouldn't put it past the Military-Industrial Complex to do something like this. People are sheep and will probably accept it. Blah blah blah..." Heaven spare me from college undergrads.
Re:Special DVD player? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Thick as theives (Score:2, Insightful)
How would that make most people feel?
I'll tell you. It'd make most people feel like they probably won't bother coming over to your house anymore after being treated like that.
Some people will buy anyway... (Score:2, Insightful)
Oddly enough, some people are still buying them. And above all, so many people aren't aware of this fact, until they try to put that CD in their car audio player..
Re:Gifts? Online purchases? (Score:2, Insightful)
Remember Divx? (Score:3, Insightful)
Look, the thing is, people buy movies and such so they'd have the convenience to watch it any time, at any place of their own choosing, and as many times as they want. Certainly, MPAA et al can put in the restrictions, but they are just slapping us in the face at the same time they are robbing us. Why would we pay for something that will be less convenient? Let them put these things out and let them lose their money on it.
What the hell ever happened to "the customer is always right" anyway? Why have we gone from being customers to being cattle? Why is it that the people who are NOT pirating the movies, etc., getting more angry about these things? Why do we think $25-$50 for a DVD is a reasonable price?
And while I am at it, how could the MPAA claim it's losing money that it's never made?
Re:Gifts? Online purchases? (Score:3, Insightful)
It is DRM enforced by technology with the LAW backing up the technology - so if the technology is overridden, you could find your behind being "overridden" by a big man named Bubba in the Federal pen for the next 5 years after which it will be illegal for you to have many jobs in the tech field (either directly or because your boss doesn't want a court to take and redistribute all its assets to satisfy a "negligent hiring/retention" suit if you do anything in the future). You could probably still work at a burger joint though.
DRM - it sure is.
treated like a thief (Score:4, Insightful)
After the transformation, it seems that every business is first and foremost in the business of making money. The products they market are mere incidentals, necessary evils in order to further their primary mission. Witness that GM revenue is divided 1/3 - 2/3 between selling cars and selling financing. (forget which third is which) They're making a significant amount of their revenue dabbling in what used to be banks' business. Or consider that a sizable part of Microsoft's revenue comes from playing financial games, and that their multibillion dollar war chest gives them a lot of ability to do this.
There's a more subtle shift here, too. Prior to the transformation of the 80's, employees were valuable resources, especially those with experience. Now employees are annoying expenses, and a drain on profits. Customers used to be valued, hoping for return business. Now, at least in some industries, they're "thieves."
I had a discussion with my son about this last night on the way home. He received several downloaded songs from friends of a European group called, "Nightwish." He now has 5 of their 6 CDs, and my daughter has 2. (and as soon as my son can find the 6th, actually their first, he wants to buy it.) I asked how likely he would have been to plunk down $17 for a CD never having really heard their music, and of course he said, "not at all." A few downloaded songs have translated to 7, potentially 8 sales, in my immediate family.
Oh, some time ago, after he had begun his Nightwish collection I sternly cautioned him about any trading in downloaded songs.
The ??AA is also more than a little STUPID in counting every downloaded song or movie as a lost unit of revenue. Case in point, me. I think long and hard before plunking down $15 for a CD. If CDs (that I like) were $7.50, I'll bet I'd buy more than twice as many. If they were $5.00, I'll bet my purchases would more than triple. At some point, I'd reach my limit of storage and clutter.
But for the guy the RIAA is suing with 10,000 songs, or whatever, he NEVER HAD the kind of money to buy that much music. Even if he had a good income, when it costs real money, you balance your music against food, rent, clothing, gasoline, eating out, going to the movies, going to concerts, etc. The only reason he would have that collection of 10,000 songs is because they were (at the time) effectively free, costing only bandwidth and space.
Choke off ALL downloads, filesharing, etc, and I suspect the ??AA wouldn't see more than even a 10% increase in their sales. Lacking the "free" source, I'll bet those people would simply choose not to buy, most of the time.
Re:Gifts? Online purchases? (Score:2, Insightful)
The retail stores would screem bloody murder if the distributers don't take on the cost burdon{sp} of the devices.
Beyond that there would have to be some way to insure that the staff at the retail outlet acctually encoded the data on the RFID.
Not to help out the researchers but a system of first play setup might be do able. But then you face the problem that half the people I know have never figured out how to set the time on their VCR.
This strikes me as a lot of the media will be returned or attempted to be returned as faulty. I can't see this getting any farther than the orginal DVIX (the DVD system where you had to pay every time you watched the DVD not the codex.)
JACEM
Re:Gifts? Online purchases? (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, Where to Start (Score:3, Insightful)
It will be an interesting demonstration of technical abilities, but who is going to pay more for player that's harder to use?
Until the players are widely adopted, what movie company is going to release their product exclusively in such a limited format? So we have a chicken and egg problem.
Requiring the buyer to be present kills off all mail order and gift sales. Bye bye Amazon.
This encoding equipment would need to be at all retail locations. Hello higher prices! And don't forget lost sales when the equipment fails.
No more rental market. Bye bye Netflix and Blockbuster.
And the real secret agenda here: No more used DVD sales! Every viewer has to buy a new DVD!!
While the last part is an MPAA wet dream come true, they'd have to virtually end their highly profitable DVD sales until they could force consumers to buy the new players. Then it becomes a tug-o-war over will the consumers buy new, much more restrictive, players just to keep watching movies, or will the movie studios lose their immensely profitable home market DVD sales.
My guess, this is another DIVX fiasco in the making. A system that works, does what it is intended to do, and will never sell. There really is a limit to the stupidity of the consumers, and I think this exceeds it.
Even if the government mandates all new player have this feature (and survives the next election after doing so), they can't force you to buy them.
I hope they do this (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Gifts? Online purchases? (Score:3, Insightful)
buy dvd
find out how encryption works (using your finger)
write software to decrypt dvd (using the key [value of your finger])
extend software to write to an MPEG from video
distrobute MPEG
Once the software has been written, it can be distrobuted from france and anybody who buys a dvd can use the software to create an mpeg out of it (although it would cost as much as a fingerprint scanner for the initial uploaders first upload)
From the Mouth of the So-called developer (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Outrageous! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I guess this is the end of Amazon and Netflix.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Authenticate This! (Score:5, Insightful)
Couch it in a "biometrics data" study on some college campus and you'll have kids LINING UP to give you biometric data, and probably more than that. They sign up for credit cards, giving name, address, income, and a ton more for a t-shirt. I've seen it happen. They run out of shirts before they run out of applicants.
Combine it with Avi Rubin's "get all the identity-theft information you can for $50" class and you've got a world-class identity theft scheme.
Re:No fair-use? No thanks! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Authenticate This! (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm sure many teens and pre-teens wouldn't bat an eye at providing virtually any type of personal data (including biometric) if it meant getting something as appealing as a free can of soda. Hell, I think most mainstream web surfers are the same regardless of age. Virtually any student or friend of mine who calls me about a computer problem starts by blurting out their passwords to me even before I can stop them--they want to be 'helpful,' but I think they also want to demonstrate loyalty and trust.
I may be wrong, but die-hard fans of certain products or movies might actually like the idea of giving personal data to entities they want to identify (or be identified) with. If Apple wanted your fingerprint to activate Tiger, you can bet some hard-cores would consider it some kind of compliment or rite of passage.
Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, when are the DRM-supporters going to realize that they're just making piracy more and more appealing? I don't buy (or pirate) movies, but if I ever wanted to, I certainly wouldn't consent to giving up biometric data. The scary thing is that most people probably would, no questions asked.
You are living in bizarro world (Score:3, Insightful)
You've got that backwards. Naturally, every person has the (legal, if not material) power to do whatever they please. Governments are composed of people, artificial entities created specifically to combine material powers in order to curb other people's powers for some supposed greater good. What powers are not curbed by the government are your "rights", i.e. those actions that are not held to be wrong by the government, and thus OK (or "right") to do. If it's not explicitly said to be wrong (illegal), then it is within your rights.
Governments did not create people and endow them with certain rights; people created governments and endowed them with the power to curb others peoples' powers for some collective good. The power of a government derives from people, not vice versa.
Sometimes it's a small number of powerful people, who together (as "the government") curb the power of large numbers of other people; other times, it's many people curbing the powers of a few. In both cases the result can be good or bad, but in both cases, the power wielded by "government" ultimately derives from some set of people.
As for "pursuit of happiness", I'm aware that that's not explicitly stated in the Constitution (and it would be an awfully imprecise way to say it, so that's a good thing). I meant that as illustration that this point of view (government derives power from the people, not vice versa) was held by the founders of our government. As for what is in the Constitution, I refer you to the 10th Amendment:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
One last bit...
The constitution grants the federal government the explicit power to regulate copyrights. That is what this is all about.
Here's how that works, start to finish:
1) In the beginning, the people can do what they want, including copy things.
2) The people allow their government to limit that right to copy.
3) Government limits that right to copy with copyright law.
4) The Fair Use doctrine limits what copyright law can limit.
5) What's acts of copying are not made explicitly illegal by law (those allowed under the Fair Use doctrine) remains as your legal RIGHTS.
The mindset you exhibit is why many of the founders did not want to enumerate any rights in the Constitution, and they were only later tacked on in the Bill of Rights. They felt that whatever was not explicitly disallowed was within your rights, and that if they said "these are your rights", people would think exclusively instead of inclusively [reciprocality.org] and believe those rights were ALL of their rights, instead of just a representative sample of specially protected, very important rights.
I believe such exclusive thinking in the general public (including lawmakers and lawyers) is why, as other responses to me said, the term "right" now means in legalese a specifically enumerated thing that the govt says you can do, and not as is commonly (and correctly) meant, anything that you are not expressly forbidden from doing.
Re:You are living in bizarro world (Score:1, Insightful)
Ignorance as to how our country the US is SUPPOSED to work is, I agree with Pfhorrest, one of the largest reasons why our rights are continually being trampled on, and we're being governed by increasingly fascist governments. We are all born with whatever rights, abilities, what have you which we are capable of exercising. The theory of American government, the unprecedented "grand idea" of democracy which ostensibly swept the world after our once-novel system of government was created, was that governments are constituted by free men with the consent of the governed. We completely free people acquiesce to having a government in order to avoid total anarchy and violence. We let the government occasionally restrict our rights, assuming in the end such infrequent restrictions benefit the common good. But if government goes overboard and gets out of control, not only do we have the right but also the duty as human beings to engage in a revolution. Thomas Jefferson predicted that a revolution would be needed every TWENTY YEARS or so, in order to keep government in check.
You're right that "fair use" is an affirmative defense to a charge of copyright infringement, but on everything else you are wrong and pfhorrest is exactly right. Start from the premise that you are completely free and have the right to do anything you want. With your agreement, your consent, the government restricts some of what you can do. Copyright is one of those restrictions. At its most fundamental level, copyright is a really broad restriction, and, as you know, the original idea was that because it was so broad, it would be very time limited. But anyway, the general rule is that only the copyright holder has the right to copy. Whoa, that's a really broad restriction we all agreed the government could impose on us.
Over the years, as people brought grievances to the courts and made such arguments, the courts have recognized that such a broad copyright restriction is too broad. They have held that copy restrictions do not extend so far as to certain actions - people still have their own rights there.
Another very very common mistake people on Slashdot make is thinking that Congress has defined Fair Use, and only those instances of fair use which are set forth in federal statute exist. Wrong again! And wrong, again unfortunately, because people keep getting the premise wrong. What Congress did is look at what the courts had said about fair use and decided, Whoa, let's add some clarity here. Let's package up the main principles from these court decisions and state them in statute. Congress didn't write an EXCLUSIVE list of fair use rights. They merely mmorilized in writing a few of the basic rights that all of us had by virtue of being born. People on Slashdot who are ignorant of their country's history and how their government is supposed to work only wrongly believe that Congress defined fair use because again, they wrongly think that government's role is to grant rights. Government never grants rights. Government can only take away rights, and only if we allow it to do so.
You may be getting fooled by the unfortunate nomenclature used which calls this exclusive right to copy a "copy right." I'm sure if the founding fathers could go back and forward in time, in retrospect they would see what a big mistake they made in their poor drafting in calling it that and would have re-named it "copy restrictions" instead of "copyright," because "copy restrictions" is what it really is.
My son is finished with his bath and pleasantly distracting me so I may be rambling a little here and I need to go. But please, you and all Slashdotters owe a duty to yourselves and to the world, which frequently suffers from dumb Am