The Entertainment Merchants Association has proposed an anti-theft system that would require videogames and DVDs to be activated at retail before they are usable.

The non-profit trade organization explained on Monday that, if the proposition would be approved by retailers, DVDs and games would ship to stores in an "inoperable state" to be then enabled at the point of sale.

EMA and its partners also want to have the ability to activate and deactivate the technology at will.

Such tech, which inventory loss professionals call "benefit denial technology," has the same premise as security tags that deploy permanent dye if forcibly removed from a piece of clothing. In effect, these systems "deny benefit" of stolen goods to thieves.

EMA"s system, dubbed "Project Lazarus," will undergo lab testing and pilot projects in 2009. "If all goes well, companies will be able to make decisions on whether to implement benefit denial technology for DVDs and video games by mid-2010 and undertake a widespread launch in the fourth quarter of that year," said Mark Fisher, VP of membership and strategic issues at EMA.

The organization estimates that in 2007, retailers lost over $300 million to inventory losses of video and videogame products.

EMA held a Benefit Denial Summit in late September, which included major retailers, video and game companies, including Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Target, Sony Home Entertainment, Paramount, Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, EA, THQ, Activision, Ubisoft and others.

The companies helped the EMA develop minimum standards for video and game benefit denial technology that aim to assure a system would be transparent to the consumer, take up no extra time at retail checkout, have no interference with on-disc tech, and possibly have a "visual cue to activation" on the packaging.