Activating discs at point of sale?

[Grubert]

http://homemediamagazine.com/news/em...chnology-13981

The Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA) has published threshold standards for “benefit denial technology,” which would allow for the disabling of DVD and video game usage until the point of sale — rendering stolen discs useless.

The standards are a result of “Project Lazarus,” an EMA effort to gather together key retailers, home video divisions and video game publishers to examine the possibilities of DVD and video game benefit-denial technology. “Project Lazarus” also is developing a cost-benefit analysis for the technology.

“The deployment of benefit denial technology would reduce shrink in video game and DVD stocks, increase open marketing of video games, reduce packaging, decrease labor costs, improve consumer access to video games and Blu-ray Discs, and make the categories more attractive for additional retail channels,” said Bo Andersen, president and CEO of EMA. “Given the myriad of potential benefits, EMA recognized the imperative to bring together major stakeholders to provide an impetus for further development and timely deployment of effective benefit denial technologies for DVDs and video games that are useful and effective for a broad range of entertainment retailers.”

The standards are available at http://www.entmerch.org/lazarus_standards.pdf

It's supposed to be 'transparent to the consumer' but I have my doubts.