Excerpts from article:
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.
“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.
RIAA officials also have announced plans for an even higher level of copy protection, involving voiceprint, DNA, and brainwave authentication. The new technology will require neurosurgery to implant cerebral probes to prevent the use of falsified brainwaves.
“But the good news is that the cerebral probes will also function as transmitters for the music, giving listeners the highest fidelity presentation of recorded sound ever!” enthused Rip Burnley, an RIAA spokesman.
Copyright lawyers for the RIAA also noted that the new, brain-based system would achieve the industry’s longstanding goal of eliminating the practice of “ear piracy,” which they explained was the overhearing of music that one had not properly paid for and licensed.
I think the record companies need to look for a new business model. Technology has made the old way they would sell music obsolete. Putting the music in chains will only hurt their business more. “Change or die!”
Maybe musicians will have to get back to actually performing their music to make a living, instead of being ‘recording artists’.
These guys need to get a grip on reality. “Ear piracy”?
Actually, the “ear piracy” stuff was a joke. I was being jocular in my comments on the story (though the story itself is real). Still, I don’t know that I would put it past them . . .