RIAA, MPAA, with spy chips?
p2pnet.net news:- Speaking of Barney, Disney and other invidious attempts by various mega corps to use the on- and offline media to get into the minds of our children so they’ll nag us into buying mindless corporate ‘product,’ CNET’s Michael Kanellos uses a pic from Australian kids’ show The Wiggles to illustrate his point: that the use of RFID by the corporate entertainment cartels would be terrifying.
Spy chips on DVDs? Think about it ……
“I found the story interesting in a horrible kind of way,” emailed Kelly.
No kidding. Pun intended.
RFID is short for Radio Frequency IDentification, automatic tracking and identification technology set into RFID tags or transponders, perhaps better known online as ’spy chips’.
Now, “I think of this as a marriage between two of the most hated concepts in technology,” says Kanellos, going on:
NXP Semiconductors and Kestrel Wireless next week will show off a solution that lets DVD makers embed RFID tags into their products. The RFID tag will disable the disc until the point of sale. Thus, if the DVD is stolen out of a warehouse or shoplifted from a store, it won’t work.
Granted, hacks will emerge, but it makes theft more difficult and it certainly increases the risk that you’ll get your one dollar’s worth when you buy pirated movies in the streets of Hanoi.
RFID in the hands of film and record producers is, “sort of like being invited to have dinner with Alec Baldwin, Al Sharpton, and Osama Bin Laden,” says the CNET post, adding:
“RFID makes privacy advocates squirm while many in the 18-to-30 demographic are perpetually offended by the attempts of movie studios to keep people from stealing their products. And then there are the conspiracy theories: with an RFID chip in CDs, police organizations will be able to scan the contents of your media collection and know that you regularly watch The Wiggles even after your kids are probably in bed, some will theorize.
“But the system does seem to help retailers.”
RFID tags are offered up innocuous inventory checking and data control systems for industry, the military, law enforcement agencies and governments. But they’re equally useful as spy chips and the same sectors will use, and are using, RFID to monitor citizens, as well as personal and private information relating to them and their activities.
As p2pnet posted a while back, Vint Cerf, Google’s chief internet evangelist, “attempted to cast a rosy glow over RFID as something that’ll make a positive difference to our lives”.
He was a panelist on a debate on the promise and pitfalls of the “smart labelling technology” at Cebit and saw a day when RFID tags were, “so ubiquitous that everything, including our socks, would be studded with them,”.
“By interrogating our sock drawer with an RFID reader we could find out if any single sock of a pair was missing,” he declared. “A check around the house with the reader would reveal the sock no matter if it was beneath the sofa or trapped in the washing machine. RFID could solve the mystery of missing socks and that’s a very important contribution to society.”
Spy chips could also give watchers the exact location of the sock’s wearer, together with a lot of other personal information he or she might prefer to keep private.
The Big 4 record labels, Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG, and Big 6 Hollywood studios, Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney, are already suing their own customers, calling them criminals and thieves.
With spy chips buried in ‘product’ ………..
(Thanks, Kelly)
Also See:
Barney – Barney, Bloody Barney, May 4, 2007
Disney – Disney Porn Time for 5-year-olds, May 4, 2007
CNET – RFID companies, record labels become allies, May 4, 2007
p2pnet – EU launches spy chip study, March 10, 2006
If your Net access is blocked by governBryan Adams slams Net radio hikement restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at thIs the endSurvey: How Did Copyright Infringement Become Equated with Robbery? (of the Net) nigh?zze University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
May 5th, 2007 at 11:29 pm
Does The MPAA Simply Make Up Piracy Numbers Out Of Thin Air?
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070502/173805.shtml
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PS: Jon, you should add a “submit story” or “submit link” form on the website.