Front end DRM
p2pnet news view | DRM:- Are piracy and theft about to go the way of the DoDo?
A new technology has caught the eye of the Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA). And it could eliminate the entertainment industry’s perceived need for back-end DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) consumer control.
Instead, DRM would be achieved at the front end.
“The Entertainment Merchants Association has just released a study showing that a new ‘point of sale activation’ technology could increase media sales by as much as six billion and reduce costs by up to $800 million,” says DigitalBattle, going on:
“If this technology is put into play, anyone who nabs a disc and sneaks out of a store will get home to find that their game, movie or cd isn’t anything other than a fancy coaster. In order to get a working product you’ll have to have the disc activated by the staff behind the counter. The EMA is now looking into the cost of deploying this technology which, if cost-effective could be in retailers by late 2010.”
It doesn’t say if the disc is copyable for legitimate back-up purposes, or whether ‘point of sale activation’ affects its playability in any context.
UPDATE:- “This is NOT about DRM or other software activagtion [sic] of the discs,” says the EMA’s Sean Bersell in a comment post, adding:
“The technology to which we are referring would be a physical lock that is opened at the point of sale via radio frequency at the point of sale. (Think of a key card that unlocks a door.) And this is not about fighting piracy (illegal reproductions), but rather fighting shrink (theft of legitimate goods). The purpose is to make it easier for the consumer to purchase the product and enable additional retail channels that have significant shrink issues to carry the product.”
(Cheers, Sukasa)
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
DigitalBattle – Disc Theft Deterrent Technology To Boost Sales Up To $6 Billion, June 23, 2009
Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It`s really easy!
Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details.
June 25th, 2009 at 9:00 am
I fail to understand how this will make any difference whatsoever…
Most stores keep the disks behind the counter which prevents the casual thief from picking them up and walking out with them! This would also have zero impact on piracy / digital distribution! The figures used are once again dreamed up out of thin air!
June 25th, 2009 at 9:24 am
I was about to post the same thing as Rabbit. This only protects against physical theft, and if the “activated” product is in any way usable, it will be ripped, cracked, and released online. I wish I had gotten into DRM instead of going to school – you can sell these people practically anything and they will sink millions into it!
June 25th, 2009 at 9:40 am
Duuur, hi kids, I’m the music industry spokesman, and I’m here to tell you that its piracy whether you gain a copy with or without depriving a copy from someone else Now be honest, who here has ever downloaded something from the internet? Raise your hands please. OK, I’m going to need all your names and numbers. Also, can we call the cops? We’re going to need this lot to be held for questioning.
Shoplifting and piracy are not synonyms.
Are they really going to try and use newspeak consistently in their statements?
Newspeak. And on George Orwell’s birthday no less.
Doubleplusungood.
June 25th, 2009 at 10:34 am
if file sharing mp3s is ‘theft’, why cant we resell paid for digital downloads? you allow resale of CDs, so if digital content is physical content, why wont the MAFIAA allow resale?
Ill tell you why, cause you fucks are greedy rapists.
June 25th, 2009 at 11:27 am
1) They might as well just give up trying to equate loss of sales with any kind of theft.
It’s a tired line that people are onto now, and I’m sure they don’t buy into it any more than we do.
2) I am pretty curious how a CD could be “unreadable” until “activated”.
From a computer point of view, the CD is either burned or it isn’t. If it has been burned, it’s readable. Inversely, if it’s not readable, not much can be done with it or added to it. And, you can’t deliberately burn a disk to be unreadable.
Obviously, the “activation” mechanism would have to be some new “external” process. Something that is physically taken away from the disc, perhaps, and then replaced at the store? I dunno, I’m having trouble conceiving how that would even work.
Would it affect playability?… Probably!
CDs are flaky enough when you’re not tampering with them.
June 25th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
They forgot who is working at the point of sale, often paid with minimum wage.
June 25th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
DA, you could probably do it by burning purposefully corrupt file tables on the CD (specifically, not burning them and just leaving a properly-sized area blank and untouched by a laser) and just burn the file table at the store based off whatever the disk was supposed to be. Perfectly useless/unreadable (usually) until activated, but when activated entirely valid and ready to play.
June 25th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
This is NOT about DRM or other software activagtion of the discs. The technology to which we are referring would be a physical lock that is opened at the point of sale via radio frequency at the point of sale. (Think of a key card that unlocks a door.) And this is not about fighting piracy (illegal reproductions), but rather fighting shrink (theft of legitimate goods). The purpose is to make it easier for the consumer to purchase the product and enable additional retail channels that have significant shrink issues to carry the product.
June 25th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
“Would it affect playability?⦠Probably!
CDs are flaky enough when youâre not tampering with them.”
Well said DA,
These are exactly the same things i was thinking reading this, If you’ve ever bought minutes for a pre=paid cell phone you know they have to activate a card at the check-out. How the hell could they do that sort of trick with a CD??
Like SteelWolf said, “I wish I had gotten into DRM instead of going to school – you can sell these people practically anything and they will sink millions into it!” Bunch of idiots!!
build your own & stw
June 25th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
@Sukasa…
I’m not sure how feasible it would be for the manufacturer to expect the retailers to be burning missing file tables. Even on specialized equipment, the process would take too long at the checkout, and disk errors would be a likely concern.
I’m pretty sure it would have to be, as Sean says, some type of physical lock applied to the product.
For me, it won’t matter in the end anyway, as I haven’t been supporting the mainstream recording industry (by buying any of their products), and won’t be doing so in the future by the looks of it.
June 25th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
I thought CDs already had RFID stickers inside the case that would set off an alarm when walking through the scanner by the exit door.
Maybe they should reintroduce those foot-and-a-half-long plastic enclosures that 8-track and cassette tapes used to come packaged in.
But why would anyone want to risk having a police record for pocketing a CD? They could download the album from Bittorrent in less time than it takes to drive to the store.
June 25th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
this is about ‘shrink’ I think thats what many people missed here. Having worked in retail I have been responsible for counting shrink. I can tell you first hand that their are a ton of people stealing shit or sometimes products disappear and then find their way back. Its only getting worse really, I have caught people red handed but then they run for it wtf am I supposed to do tackle an old lady? this sounds like it could be useful to many business’s but that is as long as it doesn’t affect legitimate customers.
June 25th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
Okay, so lemme get this straight:
1. Assuming the product is “activated” at point of sale, if it’s still copyable IN ANY FORM after such an activation, this isn’t, strictly speaking, DRM, and it certainly won’t do a damn thing against so-called “piracy”. Why? One word: SPORE. Once stripped of their assinine “secure-rom” bullshit, the improved (non-crippled) version proliferated like wildfire.
Remember, kids, it only takes ONE un-hobbled copy, anywhere in existence, to defeat any kind of “DRM’ bullshit they can imagine.
2. As far as “shrink” or whatever other nonsense their using as justification for this, why do they even keep “physical product” on hand, at all?
If they REALLY don’t want to have to deal with “shrink”, then why not burn the things on a per-sale basis, on-site? (Oh, wait — that would actually make people question the point of having to go to a “bricks and mortar” store to “buy” (or, according to the RIAA/MPAA/copyPigz, “license”) the stuff, instead of just downloading it directly.
(And it’s a really short step from “wow, I could have just downloaded this”, to “I could just download this directly from the publisher, and bypass the “vendor” entirely). So much for the RIAA/MPAA/every “software store” in existence.
3. Let’s also ignore the question about it can be considered “shoplifting” to “steal” a disc, if according to the RIAA/MPAA/pigz, you don’t “own” the media anyway, no matter how much you paid in “licensing fees”. (Odd how they always treat it as if you DO “own” the media, whenever you try to return a box after it’s been opened, and claim that “all sales are final” — when it’s to THEIR advantage, they call it a “sale”, when it’s not, we’re just “licensing” the “content.”) Fascinating how they’ve been able to get away with that doublespeak/doublethink bullshit for years.
Sorry for the ramblings here, but it just fascinates me how they’ve been able to carve out grey areas where it’s a sale — except when it’s not, basically at whim.
June 26th, 2009 at 1:47 am
I like how they use the term “shrink,” a word with so, so fewer negative connotations than the term they use for the one true industry-killer, “piracy.”