[Retired Tech]

DVDs, CDs, Blu-ray, HD DVD and other media will have RFID chips embedded into them to prevent illegal copying of movies and music. The chip is in development by a company called U-Tech, which is a subsidiary of Ritek

The technology will also find its way into drives and players. When a disc is inserted in to a player, the RFID reader will verify whether a disc has been copied or if a movie is being played in the correct geographical location.

Consumers will be unable to make home backups of discs and store away originals for safe keeping.

According to Ritek, the technology holds the potential to protect the intellectual property of music companies, film studios and gaming and software developers worldwide. Apparently, a new RFID equipped DVD drive will perform the security check by hardware, and not require system drivers or specialized software.

The intent is to prevent users from creating software to circumvent the RFID mechanism.

The online enthusiast community however, has been successfully modifying driver firmware for a number of years

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Does that mean no more importing? Because I like importing DVDs from America, it would seem such a waste of effort to do such a thing. If "hackers" are able to mod the firmware than this RFID chip is useless.
Of course what about DVD players and DVD drives.
But I assume just backing up or copying a DVD into an image isn't only way to backup it up. There are a few limited methods, which aren't very effective.

But I find it a bit much because I can't make backups of all my "new to be soon bought in the future" DVDs then.

Edited by leingod, 16 September 2006 - 06:22 PM.

[leingod]

Does that mean no more importing? Because I like importing DVDs from America, it would seem such a waste of effort to do such a thing. If "hackers" are able to mod the firmware than this RFID chip is useless.
Of course what about DVD players and DVD drives.
But I assume just backing up or copying a DVD into an image isn't only way to backup it up. There are a few limited methods, which aren't very effective.

But I find it a bit much because I can't make backups of all my "new to be soon bought in the future" DVDs then.

Edited by leingod, 16 September 2006 - 06:22 PM.

[warriorscot]

Importing as actually illegal in alot of places its illegal to do it on usually at least one side and you usually have to declare them and pay tax on it for both sides. DVDs are priced for the markets to be sold so thats why you arent supposed to import.

RFID is totally insecure at the moment its one of the reasons that there is so much controversy over putting them in passports as they can be easily read and manipulated, also there is technology uptake factors if people wont buy the payers with RFID features then it wont take off and the fact that they are having trouble selling the next gen formats as is would discourage them from ever adopting this technology at least for the moment.

[leingod]

Oh importing is actually illegal? As in how? Because I go to online stores like www.zstore.com and buy them there, and it gets sent to my country via mail or whatnot.

Edited by leingod, 16 September 2006 - 11:08 PM.