Retailers call for 'benefit denial technology'

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6201824.html

Not that this really concerns me. Most of the newer games that have come out don't impress me and I tend to stick to older games. Still, I'm sure this is bound to rub some gamers the wrong way especially with the increased DRM silliness abound these days.

I'm not sure what the likelihood of such a technology being put into place would be, but it won't do anything to actually curb piracy like it is intended to do. If anything, it exacerbates the problem.

When will distributors and retailers realize that treating people like criminals by default will not solve the problem? Why not some kind of mutually benefiting solution? Not saying I have one, but it would be a start if someone did...

I don't really see it being much of a problem unless you are one of the ones who intends on stealing games or DVDs from stores. I don't think it would impede anyone from putting it on a torrent though and it is not as big a trouble as DRM. In fact, it is probably a good idea on the part of distributors, to have such a system.

Not as bad as DRM, but I think these measures would compromise the long-term reliability of the medium itself. I wouldn't want a game I bought to become impossible to reinstall because the disc accidentally deactivated itself while aging.

Aren't the RFID tags and plastic shells enough already?
You can't sneak away with it because the RFID causes the alarm to ring.
You can't remove the RFID tag because it's beneath the hard plastic shell.
You can't remove the plastic shell because it's strong enough to require tools to do so.
And if the store's security lets you use a cash register's unlocking system or some sort of tool to destroy the shell, well, honestly, it's a store that deserves to be stolen from because the people there are terminally incompetent.

Gez said:

Not as bad as DRM, but I think these measures would compromise the long-term reliability of the medium itself.

... and that's why it is a first class way to destroying one's business.

One word.

Control.

I'm sure dedicated thieves would find a way around it in record time while the people actually being inconvenienced are paying customers.

Bucket said:

while the people actually being inconvenienced are paying customers.

Again. :(

The only way I can see this working in the short-term is with games that have to be registered online - that would become a two-step process with the first step being point-of-sale authorisation. DVD movies will be more problematic since your typical standalone DVD player doesn't connect to the Internet, which means another solution will be forced upon us - probably involving hardware/firmware changes to the players and a new generation of disks with a WORM track. That technology - once developed and deployed - could also be applied to games, with the only benefit I could see being the possible elimination of online registration. If the new system's not backward compatible with existing optical drives be prepared to buy new hardware, haunt the torrent sites or go without.

BTW - I didn't see anything in the article to suggest that this would replace existing copy protection systems.