May 12, 2005—A group of researchers at UCLA is working on a new RFID application that would provide consumers a means of watching DVDs of movies as soon as they hit the theaters. It could also be used to address one of Hollywood's biggest concerns: piracy of digital content. The group is researching a method of using RFID as a tool for digital rights management (DRM), wherein technologies are employed to protect media files from unauthorized use.

The UCLA research group is developing the software and hardware components of a system that would embed DVDs with an RFID tag and DVD players with an RFID reader so that the tagged DVDs would play only in RFID-enabled players and only if the reader could authenticate the DVD's tag. In order to authenticate, the player would also need to link to some type of online network, similar to the EPCglobal Network, that would associate the DVD with a legal sale. Through this system, the copyright owners (the film production company and any other license-holders of the content) would have digital rights management over the work. But viewers would not be able to play the DVDs without an RFID-enabled player because the tag would essentially lock the disc.

Rajit Gadh, professor in UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science and director of WINMEC, says that the research going into the project is targeted at determining whether the concept is technologically feasible. "We're in the very early stages of this project—the first research stage," says Gadh. "We have different pieces of the technology and a pretty good idea of how it is going to fit together. But we don't have anything that we could demonstrate. We should begin to publish research reports on the project during the next six months."

Once the initial research work is complete, the group will begin building prototypes of RFID-enabled DVD players and tagged DVDs. A potential hurdle, says Gadh, will be interference from other electronics in the home that also use RF. The group will also need to develop a system for writing to the tags, a platform for associating DVDs with their purchasers or owners and a means of encrypting the tag data. The WINMEC group has developed a middleware platform called WinRFID that it will use in the development of the RFID/DRM project.

Any commercial application of the technology would be initiated and developed by film production companies, manufacturers of DVDs and DVDs, and any other relevant players. A method of distributing proceeds for the rights to the films would also need to be established. "We don't know if it's ever going to happen, but we are creating the technology in case someone ever wants to create the business," he says.

"I don't know if this is going to reduce piracy," he adds, "but it would create a market where one does not yet exist." Gadh believes consumers would be interested in purchasing specialized early releases of DVDs, as well as the specialized DVD players needed to play them, if it meant being able to watch new releases at home as soon as they come out. He is quick to point out, however, that WINMEC is not the originator of the concept of developing a means to sell DVDs of movies while the films are also in theaters. He says he had heard people within the entertainment industry mention this concept before. WINMEC is researching just one technology that could be used for this application.

Within days of a feature film's release in theaters (and sometimes before its theatrical release) illegal DVDs of the film are often available, online or in illegal markets, says Gadh. These films are sometimes leaked to pirates by film industry insiders or are recorded with digital camcorder brought into a movie theater. The Motion Picture Association of America, a trade group that represents major Hollywood studios, estimates that the U.S. motion picture industry loses more than $3 billion annually in potential worldwide revenue due to piracy.

The digital format of most films and music released today has led to its increased piracy. The quality of video and audio recordings based in analog technology, such as cassette or VCR tapes, decreases each time an original version is copied. When digital recordings, such as CDs and DVDs, are copied, however, no quality is lost. Also, it is easy to make many copies of digital recordings to sell as DVDs or VHS tapes. The MPAA says pirates with the right CD pressing equipment can produce thousands of perfect video compact discs (VCDs) or DVDs daily. Also, a number of file-sharing sites allow Web users to freely upload audio and video files. In the late 1990s, file-sharing Web site Napster was sued by German entertainment company Bertelsmann, which charged Napster with copyright infringement. Los Angeles-based Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios is currently suing online music and video swapping site Grokster, also over copyright infringement.

Gadh says WINMEC is incorporating input it gets from its film, television and music industry contacts in the Los Angeles area as it develops this and other projects that have multimedia applications. He says WINMEC began looking into the potential uses of RFID in DRM after members of the consortium were discussing how quickly pirated versions of feature films become available online and on DVD. "We asked, 'Wouldn't it be great if there was a way to release a DVD on the first day of a film's release, but a DVD that is locked and which will only play on a certain number of machines?'" he says. This would give consumers a legitimate means of purchasing DVDs of films as soon as they are released. Gadh has asked a number of executives within the entertainment industry why the production companies do not just release DVDs of films as soon as they are released in the theaters but says he has never gotten a clear answer. He suspects, however, that is it has something to do with the loss in revenue that movie theaters would likely suffer.

Gadh presented the DRM project last week at UCLA during a one-day workshop with the National Science Foundation's WICAT (Wireless Internet Center for Advanced Technology) program. WINMEC has received a planning grant for the WICAT program, a national consortium of university research groups that are developing wireless Internet applications. The DRM project relates to WINMEC's broader work with wireless Internet applications because the platform for the rights management will ultimately be managed through a virtual network, similar to the EPCglobal Network. That network would accessible through either wired or wireless Internet connections. The digital rights management project is one of six research projects that were presented at the event.

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Read the entire article: http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/1589/1/1/

Also see:
http://p2pnet.net/story/4819

and we will find a way to crack this technology too. no technology exists without a way to circumvent it. period.

We'd all have to go out and buy new their infested DVD players just to play their new infested content anyways. Not gonna happen.

...not unless they can ram it thru congress as a new-fangled "broadcast flag/DMCA" preventing manufacturers from making players that are not RFID equipped.

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Stay a step AHEAD of the enemy!

-We'd all have to go out and buy new their infested DVD players just to play their new infested content anyways-

Which would spawn an underground hardware market, making or modifying "illegal" (or pirate) DVD players. Oooo the intrigue.

Sounds like a lot of work just to protect a movie or tv show no one will remember in 10 years. Seems like if people put more effort into creating quality content, more money might be made from people who wanted to pay to see it.

And also, why the hell are boxed sets of CSI so expensive? I could understand $30 or even $50, but $80?! That my friends is called skinning the sheep, which is something you can only do once because the sheep has only one skin to give. Better to sheer the sheep and get more wool when it grows back.

Sheep don't like to be skinned, people don't like to be fleeced, ask too much of us and we seek our entertainment elsewhere. No amount of chipping makes us buy things.

Crack this? Not easily.

The studios and protection-coordinators wont make the same mistake twice. If they ever impliment this (Which I consider unlikely - they have invested too much in HD-DVD or blu-ray to change it now) they will ensure that no PC DVD-drives had the hardware to read it. So any method of decrypting would depend on complicated hardware mods.

Only the most technicly capable people could do that. But thats ok - because they will just put their results on the p2ps for everyone to see!

Still, I dont expect to ever see this actually implimented on a large scale. As I said, no studio is going to consider making customers buy new DVD players at this time. Not with HD-DVD just round the corner, which will require a new player anyway. HD-DVDs protection is unbroken (because its not been used yet), and a lot tougher than CSS, so they are confident that it will protect their ficticious rights.

Of course, people still have to buy new HD-DVD players. But its a lot easier to sell them: 'Buy this and watch higher quality pictures' sounds a lot better than 'Buy this because we want to make your expensive current equipment useless for reasons we dont want to talk about'.

"The studios and protection-coordinators wont make the same mistake twice. If they ever impliment this (Which I consider unlikely - they have invested too much in HD-DVD or blu-ray to change it now) they will ensure that no PC DVD-drives had the hardware to read it. So any method of decrypting would depend on complicated hardware mods.
"

but the will make new mistakes.

I can only see one reason the studios would want to use such an elaborate and expensive system - the tags could be writable.

Imagine if each DVD player had a unique number, and wrote that number onto each new DVD it played - and refused to play a DVD with the number of a different player. The secondhand market would be killed, DVD lending made impossible... the studios dreams made reality. What more could they wish for, except a way to stop those annoying people inviteing friends round to watch DVDs together?

They wouldn't do that immediately, too much of a consumer backlash and possible legal issues with First Sale or similar. If the studios ever dared to try it, it would probably start with something more innocent-seeming. Anti-theft measures, perhaps.