ENCINO, Calif. — The Entertainment Merchants Association said yesterday that it has published threshold standards for benefit denial technology that would allow DVDs and video games to be shipped to retail outlets in an inoperable state and subsequently enabled at the point of sale.

If adopted by the industry, this could possibly overcome the theft problem that has turned many supermarket retailers away from entertainment software products like DVDs, observers said. They would be like gift cards: worth nothing until purchased.

EMA reported that the effort, nicknamed “Project Lazarus,” also is focused on developing criteria for the evaluation of proposed systems and developing a cost-benefit analysis for the technologies, based on empirical data and forecasting.

“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, EMA’s president and chief executive officer.

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