RIAA wants your fingerprints

[BaseLine]

RIAA wants your fingerprints
Not content with asking for an arm and a leg from consumers and artists, the music industry now wants your fingerprints, too. The RIAA is hoping that a new breed of music player which requires biometric authentication will put an end to file sharing.

Established biometric vendor Veritouch has teamed up with Swedish design company to produce iVue: a wireless media player that allows content producers to lock down media files with biometric security. This week Veritouch announced that it had demonstrated the device to the RIAA and MPAA.

"In practical terms, VeriTouch's breakthrough in anti-piracy technology means that no delivered content to a customer may be copied, shared or otherwise distributed because each file is uniquely locked by the customer's live fingerprint scan," claims the company.

iVue has been developed in partnership with Swedish design house Thinking Materials. Since Veritouch already supplies security authentication systems up to Homeland Defense standards (in partnership with an Israeli defense contractor), we do forsee exciting synergies ahead, should budget cuts force the War on Terror and the War on Piracy to be consolidated into just the one unwinnable "war".

source (http://www.theregister.com/2004/06/04/biometric_drm/)


Funny, you'll almost forget it's about music and not a computer in the pentagon.

[Third EYe]

i can't wait til they fold up.

[AxezCore]

And how long do they think it'll take for the groups to crack this.. 1 maybe 2 days?

and once again they connect the software "pirates" with terrorrists. I'd be a happy man if they'd just spend half as much energy catching virus writers, spammers and browserhijackers they're the ones ruining the internet, not the "pirates" :(

[zap]

WTF!?!?!?!?!? If I spend my hard earned money on a CD, I have the frickin right to make copies of it, make mix-tapes, mix-cds, WHATEVER I frickin WANT TO DO WITH IT. Fuck THEM! NO WAY will I give my frelling FINGER PRINTS when I buy something! Its MINE! That is just completely INSANE. I agree with Axezcore, get to work on the damn virus writers, spammers, browserhijackers and LEAVE CONSUMERS ALONE!

[vacantlook]

Lameass!

[AgentSun]

in practical terms, this would never...ever...work. how the heck do they expect this to work? putting biometrics on every CD they produce wouldn't stop it from using crap technology that anyone can bypass with some thinking and googling.

[Lord Loser]

I believe only the player is biometric, but that means that it would have to write a specific code to each CD played inside it, thereby limiting the CD to one player. This however, leads to many complications. If the player fails, does that mean you have to re-purchase your entire collection? If you sell or give away CD's that you don't like, or want anymore, does that mean they won't play for anyone else? The problem is not the idea, it's the foundation that "piracy" is a problem. How much "piracy/downloading" is there of the new Metallica CD even after they pitched their fit? I'd wager not very much because from most accounts, it's not very good.

Frankly I couldn't care less what they do, I haven't bought a CD/tape/record in years. And the one thing that the RIAA seems to be unable to grasp, is that the more difficult the music is to access, the less people will want to access it. It's not worth the hassel to me, I just turn on the radio and take my chances. Music SALES drive the industry, not radio time, but if they continue on their current train of thought, there will be no music industry left to choke the life out of.

[TechnoBoY]

The solution. Dont buy the new stuff with the biometrics. They cant enforce it if nobody has the players anyways. Everyone would just buy the old stuff.

[AgentSun]

most of the stuff i listen to aren't going to be so mainstream that the RIAA will spend money to put anything on because they don't consider them to be big money makers. they'll put their crap technology on britney, justin, and major rap artists.

and linkin park would never allow their CDs to be subjected to this, they're pro-internet dowloading.

[Paul Cousins]

Funny, you'll almost forget it's about music and not a computer in the pentagon.

This is the strongest agruement yet that we should declare ALL music public domain that are more than a year old.

I doubt even those at the RIAA would be willing to put up with a system like this for themselves.

Honestly, how many more bridges can they burn till no one buys their music at all.