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Indeed, in some countries such as the UK, Australia and USA, they've already gone a goodly way along that road and it's pretty much accepted that it's not a matter of "if" but "when".

Even here in New Zealand there have been attempts to thrust such a card upon the general population and, although it was roundly rejected by the public when first mooted, we've all noticed a little "thin end of the wedge" appearing. I'm pretty sure that deep-down, most of us have already accepted that we too are in the "when" not "if" category.

After being awe-struck by the power that the recording and motion picture industries have (particularly in the USA), I've come to the conclusion that these groups will likely play a very pivotal role in the introduction of ID cards -- yes, I'm serious.

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How does this work?

Well take the issue of piracy and DRM...

Right now, every man and his dog (and his dog's fleas) are trying to get a share of every recording or movie sold on disk or sold via internet download.

Even today's headlines carry the news that actors, directors and writers are now seeking residual royalties from digital download sales.

As a result of this money-lust, the MPAA/RIAA (or respective organisations in other countries) are really hanging out for an *effective* form of DRM that will kill piracy and allow them to extract every last cent from every last sale.

This is where your national ID card comes in.

I'm sure that it has not escaped the imagination of some crazy movie or recording studio bright-spark that mandatory "smart" ID cards could be the key to the holy grail of DRM.

Imagine a national ID card with an inbuilt RFID chip that is capable of identifying *you* in a manner that is virtually impossible to forge.

Now imagine a DRM system that can compare your unique ID with the encrypted ID of your player and your media (disk or download). If they don't match then you'll hear/see nothing.

What's more, this has significant benefits to all parties.

Your collection of music/movie disks will be useless to anyone but you -- so there's no point in a burglar bothering to steal them.

The movie/music industries would finally be able to lock a sale to an individual customer rather than just their computer or Media player.

The government of the day gets another justification for introducing mandatory ID cards: the ability to protect the "public" against piracy.

Okay, so how are we going to lock a CD/DVD to an individual user's ID card?

Simple -- the disk has a "write-once" track, on which an encrypted form of the key can be written at the time of purchase. Likewise, downloaded files can have that data included prior to download.

Of course, to play your favourite bit of music or watch a movie you'd have to wave your RFID-equipped national ID card in front of your media player - but that takes just an instant.

Gosh, I hope I haven't put ideas into anyone's head :-)

Give the lengths that other governments (USA's DMCA, media/player taxes applied by Canada, Germany etc) have gone to to apease the demands of the recording/movie industries, could their lobbying powers extend to bringing forward the introduction of smart national ID cards?

Do you think the benefits would outweigh the costs in terms of your "rights"?

Go have your say in The Aardvark Forums

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