Sony Who thinks DNA tracking is a good way to prevent piracy? Sony! That's who!

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Website playstationlifestyle.net uncovered recently a Sony patent that describes a system to track your fingerprints, iris, and dna in order to prevent hacking and piracy, as well as for targeted advertising purpose. Sounds like a great idea… not.


Your Identity and your privacy are today the major assets giant tech companies fight to control. Google has proven that targeted advertising is a very profitable business, and all companies want their share of the loot on your personal information. Beyond this, companies like Sony, that sell digital products, are spending considerable amounts of money to protect their products from piracy, through the use of malware DRMs.

In and “ideal” world, DRMs would recognize the person who paid for some specific digital content, and let that person use the digital content on whatever hardware they want, whenever they want. This was, actually, the promise of DRMs and of the cloud. But practically, what DRMs actually are today is a strong limitation in how you can use your purchased content, which is usually restricted to a few devices (it used to be 5 for Sony, it is now 2), a few allowed copies (something that goes along the law of many countries), and is in general a major pain in the a##. People who bought Ubisoft games recently might know what I am talking about. Bottom line is, DRMs are not doing what they are supposed to do.

Sony think they might have a solution, by providing a patent which proposes to recognize a user through biometrics, such as their fingerprints, iris, or DNA. Such a system they say, would allow to create a system such as “By associating content with an authorized user, each download may be made unique so that only the authorized user (e.g., one who has paid for the content) will be able to access it. Such a technique may be used to prevent hacking or copying to steal music, software, video games or other copyrighted content“.



In other parts of the patent, Sony explain: “the invention can be used to prevent unauthorized sharing of online accounts. A biometric identifier, such as a fingerprint ID, that is generated during ordinary use of the online content allows the content server to determine whether a user attempting to access an online account is the user associated with that account.”

Sony also mentions improvements to targeted advertising, when your device (potentially your console) knows who is actually currently using it.

Well, I’m all for the possibility to play the content I purchased everywhere I want. But storing my DNA on the servers of the number 1 target of hackers worldwide is definitely not the solution to that. How about we simply get rid of DRMs, and let people enjoy the content they purchased however they want? Last time I checked, selling mp3s without DRM seemed to work pretty well for companies like Apple and Amazon. HumbleBundle is doing great with DRM free video games, etc…

Hopefully, this is one of those patents that get filled but never used… How about you, would you like Sony to play with your biometric information? Do you think hacks in the future will require you to alter your DNA with the help of radioactive injections?

Basically, Sony wants to use your DNA and other biometric information to identify you whenever you access a gaming system made by them. The information will be stored in their servers, and will be freely accessible both by Sony personnel and anybody who is determined enough to hack into Sony's servers; that is to say, every hacker with a decent amount of skill.

Thoughts?

 

Actually I' d rather have pirates stealing my "DNA" than my credit card numbers. Ideally I' ll avoid giving either.
However, what do they mean by DNA ? Would I have to spit on the console or something ? When did DNA tests become so simple to do ? Something buggy this way comes.

 

How the hell does this even intend to work? A small spike on the console that I prick my finger on and we go from there?

This seems like a really odd idea.

 

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Sony makes a ton of patents constantly, but most are never used. So does this really matter? No. However, I agree with Patman, I would much rather have my DNA information stolen than things like credit card information.

It's always amusing whenever people call Sony evil based on some patents though.

 

While the idea may seem to scream horrid future utopian society and all that stuff, it is just another alternative to prevent stealing credit card information, especially after that PSN incident a little whiles back.

In my opinion, however, I feel that stealing someone's DNA is worse than stealing someone's credit card information. I mean, that's literally your own personal identity and I'd feel stripped of myself if somebody went that far, especially just to buy a couple of video games.

But nonetheless, it's still too early to say anything about it. Hackers will hack no matter what and we just need a solution to lessen the rate of that.

 

You' re assuming, the pirate would understand the data, which is doubtful. DNA code is basically a bunch of A, C, G and T, translated into binary code it would be a bunch of ones and zeros. I have a hard time imagining a hacker looking at it and going "huh, blue eyes ...". Even if he was actually well versed enough in biology to translate it chances are he would only see this data as a password, why the hell would he care about what it actually means ?

 

I guess it's the fact that these criminals would just see it as nothing but a pass code and it irks me.

Again, this is just from a personal and possibly psychological standpoint, but everything that makes you who you are would be taken without hesitation. I know that's a characteristic of a criminal to do that anyway, but I just see my own identity/dignity valued more so than my bank account.

And again, this is just a primitive idea for now, and details are ambiguous on how it would actually work, so my views might change on this anti-piracy innovation.

 

Personally, I just think it's stupid. They seem to think that people will think it's a-OK that they want to consider making biometric security a required part of owning their console. The majority of the general public who know about the patent will freak out at Sony evil even considering it a possibility, and that will undoubtedly lose them money because people won't want to buy their products if there's the possibility that these measured could be implemented.

A utopia is a good thing. You're thinking of a dystopian society.

 

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Not too sure I like this idea.

First off, the implementation. Their method of obtaining this DNA is going to be pretty complicated.

Secondly, what if I want to let a friend/family member play a game on my PSWhatever while I'm out? They can't if this DNA thing happens.

And then the whole stealing of someone's ID. I get that if they steal Credit Card info, they can use it for things other than buying games, since they'd have all the info they need, really, but a stolen Credit Card can be shut down within a matter of hours, if you know it has happened, and then you can get a new one issued. DNA, I don't think can be handled in the same way, but it's a nice sentiment.