[LINK] DVD chips 'to kill illegal copying'

[Saliya Wimalaratne]

On Mon, Sep 18, 2006 at 03:04:56PM +0800, brd at iimetro.com.au wrote:
> DVD chips 'to kill illegal copying'
> By Simon Burns,
> 18 September 2006 09:58 AEST
> http://www.itnews.com.au/newsstory.aspx?CIaNID=37134
> 
> 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.

How precisely is this different from the current region coding? That is,
there is a property of the disc, which in combination with a feature of
the player can be used to restrict certain actions. Substitute
"region code" for "chip" in the following sentence...

> 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.

We all know what happened to region-coding of players. Consumers don't 
want it; this is been-there, done-that territory. At some point, someone
will figure out how to fool/bypass/disable the RFID reader in a player, 
and we'll be back to where we are now. 

Honestly, you'd think that the movie studios they're attempting to 
sell this concept to would be smarter. You'd think that what they'd
do is figure out how to make it _easier_ for the consumer to give
them money...

Wonder how many patents Ritek holds on RFID-in-media? :)

Regards,

Saliya