The Cannon That Will Sink The Ships Of DVD Piracy - Embedded RFID

Johnny Depp portrays character 'Captain Jack Sparrow' in a scene from the film 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest' in this undated publicity photograph. Image Credit: REUTERS/Peter Mountain/Disney Enterprises/Handout

The Cannon That Will Sink The Ships Of DVD Piracy - Embedded RFID

"Avast ye, you soil-licking varmints." ("Hello"), today - September 19, 2006 - is "Talk Like a Pirate Day" throughout North America so says talklikeapirateday.com.

TLAPD was founded by John Baur and Mark Summers during a raquetball game and Talk Like a Pirate Day has taken the world by storm. The thing just sort of grew, and then took off in 2002 when Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Dave Barry got wind of it and wrote about it in his Miami Herald Column. (HT: talklikeapirateday.com)

Yar, but I digress! Aye, piratin'o' music and mo'ie D'd's has been a real problem throughout the world. Gar, Where can I find a bottle o'rum?

Just yesterday, it was reported that Chinese police and copyright officials have raided 537,000 illegal publication markets and distributors in major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Liaoning Province.

Arrr, these operations seized 13 million pirated D'd's. Aye, me parrot concurs (these operations seized 13 million in pirated DVD's).

About 500,000 pirated CDs and DVDs are destroyed during a recent crackdown on pirated audio and video products in Shenyang, capital of Northeast China's Liaoning Province. Image Credit: China Daily

Arrr, technology rides t' the rescue with embedded RFID. A pence for an old man o'de sea?

Excerpts from VNU Net -

DVD chips 'to kill illegal copying'
Embedded radio transmitter chips to track movie, music and software discs
Simon Burns in Taipei, vnunet.com 15 Sep 2006

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.

The technology, which can also be used for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs, will allow movie studios to remotely track individual discs as they travel from factories to retail shelves to consumers' homes.

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.

"This technology holds the potential to protect the intellectual property of music companies, film studios, gaming and software developers worldwide," said Gordon Yeh, chief executive of Ritek Corporation.

Ritek is the world's largest DVD maker, and its U-Tech subsidiary will make the discs.
U-Tech and IPICO, the company behind the RFID chips used in the discs, announced today that production of the 'chipped' DVDs will begin at U-Tech's main plant in Taiwan.

DVD-R is a high capacity optical disc, which is ideal for high volume data recording, archiving and playback. RIDATA DVD-R ensures high durability and reliability for a variety of recording situations, making it a versatile storage solution. Image Credit: RITEK USA/Advanced Media Inc.

U-Tech's global network of factories stamps out some 500 million pre-recorded DVDs and CDs a month for major movie studios, recording studios and video games companies.

After ironing out bugs in the manufacturing process, U-Tech will work with major movie studios on a large-scale test of an RFID-based supply chain management process at its manufacturing plant and distribution centre in Australia.

RFID readers will then be built-in to home DVD players to extend the anti-copying technology into homes as part of a digital rights management system.

U-Tech described this as the "real end game" for the chip-on-disc technology, which would "eliminate optical disc piracy in the entertainment and IT sectors".

IPICO claims that its RFID tags can be read from at least six metres away, and at a rate of thousands of tags per minute. The passive chips require no battery, as they are powered by the energy in radio waves from the RFID reader.
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Ahoy, this would effecti'ely put an end t' pirate production o D'd's as we know them. Aye, me parrot concurs - (this would effectively put an end to pirate DVD's as we know them).