June 06, 2004

Great Moments in Music Industry Paranoia: Finger-Scan Copy Protection

If the record industry’s hyper-paranoia over piracy wasn’t so well-established, then it would be tempting to dismiss the following “innovation” as some discarded out-take from the Minority Report futurism think-tank… But it’s all very real…
Back in January, Swedish design firm Thinking Materials developed a media player with fingerprint-based file security. And now, the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America are seriously considering the player as a means of stopping mp3/movie piracy

Surely they aren’t serious?… Don’t they realise that P2P pirates are the sort of proto-terrorists who would cut off a person’s fingers to get at their legally-acquired music collection?... Far better to look beyond flimsy external biometrics and go for the chip implants already used as membership cards by Spanish clubbers... To guard against extraction, we could embed them in the brain and equip them with DNA-based DRM… The possibilities are endless… I await my APRA commission with much anticipation…

Posted by Warren at June 6, 2004 08:16 PM | Copyright