More Freedom for DVD Players?

weopenlatest writes "According to this Wired article, the House just passed a bill allowing DVD players to skip through programming. While the article stressed using this ability for parental controls, it would seem like it would also apply to annoying previews and ads that load automatically. Could this be a step in the right direction towards uncrippled DVD players?"

Comments

Classfication flags

[fembots]

Will we be seeing movies with built-in flags, so that parents only need to configure the player to skip [sex(base 1/2/3/4)], [violance(blood 1/2/3/4)] etc, it'll be similar to the rating/parental card on cable TVs except with better, more specific control over the content.

Parents may be more likely pay a bit more for these "pre-screened" DVDs than using ClearPlay's service - A bite-back from the movie industry?

Re:Classfication flags

[Anonymous Coward]

Since this was passed by the House, parents will be able to force you to keep using the DVD player even after its been declared braindead.

Re:Classfication flags

[mr_zorg]

Will we be seeing movies with built-in flags, so that parents only need to configure the player to skip [sex(base 1/2/3/4)], [violance(blood 1/2/3/4)] etc, it'll be similar to the rating/parental card on cable TVs except with better, more specific control over the content.

DVDs already have parental controls including the ability to seamlessly branch content. If the studios were so inclined, they could provide movies now that seamlessly scale down from an R rating to PG-13, etc.. But they don't. So, in short, no, I doubt they'll be doing what you suggest.

Re:Classfication flags

[MindStalker]

The movie industry is fighting this tooth and nail. Something about destroying the directors vision or some junk. Don't expect DVDs to come with this standard.

Re:Classfication flags

[qurk]

How about built in flags: Just shelled out $20 or $30 on this damn DVD and want to listen to it in Japanese. Not the dubs and voiceovers and badly translated subtitles, in Japanese. This flag lets you listen in Japanese. If you shell out $100 more to import this and watch it in Japanese, you are obviously a pirate and you'd better have bought a damn DVD player from Japan and paid a premium on that, you stupid pirate, how dare you steal money from us!

Re:Classfication flags

[JohnsonWax]

Well, maybe if they're more specific:

skip[sex(male frontal nudity)], play[sex(female frontal nudity)], slow-mo[sex(girl-on-girl)]

I bet lots of people would pay more for those pre-screened DVDs.

Re:Classfication flags

[NanoGator]

"The movie industry is fighting this tooth and nail. Something about destroying the directors vision or some junk. Don't expect DVDs to come with this standard."

Why would that bother them? It would (potentially) mean they can make their vision happen the way they like, and the user can automatically water it down to their tastes. Personally, I don't have a problem with this. If I made a movie that satisfied my vision, and some people wanted to view a worse version of it, fine with me. It beats having to shoe-horn it into a lower rating.

I'm thinking about Robocop right now. The original cut of it earned an X-Rating for violence. They had to cut scenes out to get it down to R. They made the X-Rated version available on DVD. I watched it, and I couldn't believe what altering it did to some of the scenes. In one case, it actually made a scene a lot scarier. Remember when ED-209 blew away an executive? In the theatrical version, it basically opened fire on him and stopped when he died. It looked very cold-blooded. In the original version, it opened fire and blew the guy onto a table. It then kept firing over and over and over and over again. Despite all the blood spraying into the air, it was actually kind of funny. Stupid thing just kept on firing even though dude was dead. But... the blood. That scene had to go. What was once a humurous scene showing an insanely bad bug (Microsoft, anyone?) turned into a depiction of an evil robot.

I would imagine that Paul Verhoeven would have much preferred to have been able to release one DVD with user controlled settings.

Re:Classfication flags

[mOdQuArK!]

As a potential customer, I don't give a damn about what the movie industry "wants" - except so far as get pissed off that they aren't selling me what *I* want, and seem to think that they have the "right" to control as much of my media flow as they can get their greed-stained hands on.

I strongly believe that it will be highly beneficial to society in the long-run if those industries who depend on the artificial monopoly of "intellectual property" to allow them to parasitically suck money out of the economy are destroyed, and the pieces are used to reconstruct alternatives that are more in tune with free markets & private property rights.

Re:Classfication flags

[skyman8081]

That doesn't stop them from releasing pan-and-scan versions of films...

Re:Classfication flags

[hunterx11]

The movie industry could care less about directors' vision. Directors and people who care about the artistic integrity of movies may be against it, but their political influence in the U.S. is probably about as significant as the Communist Party.

Re:Classfication flags

[Anonymous Coward]

It's actually the directors, and some others, specifically that are pushing for this to be shot in the back of the head. Their view, "If you don't like my vision, fuck you, I don't need your money anyway, don't go see my movie." Honestly, as something of a movie snob, I can't say I disagree.

Better yet, why don't a few of those pansies, just a few (or as many as the market can bare) start writing and directing the movies no one wants to see so we can let the market decide. The directors have spoken, they don't want that money. And that is capitalism too.

Look at the riders for this bill. Hey, Slashdot posted a story about it earlier today. And guess what all the hillbillies in Utah that own a thousand shares of Disney should *still* be shot in the face on general principle.

Re:Classfication flags

[AussieVamp2]

or some meta-filters skip(chick flick) skip(American romantic comedy) skip(Jude Law) until (Angelina Jolie) repeat++

Re:Classfication flags

[Zemran]

If I can skip adverts and copyright notices then I will be happy. Somehow I doubt that I will be happy :( Here in Thailand you can buy legit DVD that just start straight into the movie, trouble is they are in Thai language. They are such a great idea but for some reason no one does them in English :( Even the copied DVDs do not do this. You can get VCDs that do this in English but the quality is rubbish and you have to change disks in the middle. I will master the art of ripping them soon so that I can copy mine and make them auto start into the movie with 5.1 sound in English.

Re:Classfication flags

[Queer Boy]

they could provide movies now that seamlessly scale down from an R rating to PG-13, etc.. But they don't. So, in short, no, I doubt they'll be doing what you suggest.

Yeah, strangely that was a big selling point for DVDs from the manufacturers and the studios. Also, why the FUCK can't I watch a DVD that has deleted scenes in it in place where they were deleted, I mean, it's a computer function at that point. That was another big selling point for DVDs early on.

Oh, well. At least the sound and picture is better.

Re:Classfication flags

[shmlco]

Also, why the FUCK can't I watch a DVD that has deleted scenes in it in place where they were deleted,

It would depend greatly on WHEN they decided to delete the scene, as many deleted scenes are not up to the post-processing standards of the rest of the movie. Why spend dollars adding a cgi background or effect to a deleted scene?

Re:Classfication flags

[Pofy]

As long as there is a flag indicating if it is legal to go to the toilett while watching the movie, I am fine.

Seriously, why have laws indicating how someone watches or uses a DVD at home at all? Isn't that an indication something in the law system is wrong? What is next? A law saying it is OK to skip ads while reading a newspaper?

Re:Classfication flags

[Anonymous Coward]

You make a good point. I have no problem with this so-called "family-friendly" programming we all hear the conservatives drone on and on about. Fine, if these people want that, then they should produce it and run it on their own TV network. Oh wait, they already tried that. It's called Pax, and it sucks, at least IMHO.

And I wonder if these people, as they're sitting there watching Fox News spout its conservative bullshit, ever realize that they're being played. Fox News is owned by News Corp. (man, there's a misnomer), which also owns the Fox network, which airs the raciest programming of any of the broadcast networks. These people cheering on Fox News and what it claims to stand for are the real suckers, and I don't think they even see it.

Re:Classfication flags

[koreaman]

You can do it yourself, with the right hardware and software.

Re:Classfication flags

[Anonymous Coward]

Kirk Cameron needs work. Faith can't sustain a man alone. He needs bread too.

Re:Classfication flags

[qodfathr]

Also, why the FUCK can't I watch a DVD that has deleted scenes in it in place where they were deleted

When you play the 'Extended Edition' of "Ray", it pretty much does exactly that. Some of the transitions are jarring, and a lot of the deleted scenes never went through full post production. But, hey, it's what you wanted.

Now, if you want it for an arbitrary DVD, you could author your own ISO file (as in the ISO files on the DVD, not an ISO of the DVD) and play the scenes (including deleted ones) in any order that pleases you.

Re:Classfication flags

[Zarquon]

Right.. and on several of the players that I tried Ray on, seamless branching wasn't. There was a noticable pause at every branch while the player found the video.

R C

Re:Classfication flags

[Anonymous Coward]

so it's capitalism. We can't force the studios to make DVD's with different version options on the disk. The bill the house passed is to stop the studios from removing your ability to do it yourself.

If I want to program my DVD to skip all the scenes I don't like in a movie (that I bought) that should be my right. The studios wanting to stop me from doing that was right up there with the idea that going to the john during TV commercials was "stealing". You made your movie. Fine I bought it. I don't like parts of it and I'm going to skip them. Deal with it.

Re:Classfication flags

[evilviper]

Why would that bother them? It would (potentially) mean they can make their vision happen the way they like, and the user can automatically water it down to their tastes.

I imagine their objection is because they want to slip in some nudity and violence here and there, in an otherwise PG movie, and make money off the teens convincing their parents to rent/buy it for them...

The argument they use is obviously complete BS anyhow... The movies we see aren't true to the director's vision, otherwise we wouldn't ever see "director's cuts" of films.

Re:Classfication flags

[RedWizzard]

Seamless branching is anything but. It's essentially the same as the layer change. So if it's done well, between scenes, it's barely noticable, but you're not going to be able to use it in the middle of scenes with most players if you want to avoid a jarring pause. If the players had read ahead buffers it could be done, but AFAIK few to none do.

Re:Classfication flags

[croddy]

this is what we refer to as "close enough".

Re:Classfication flags

[Jeremi]

What I don't understand is how copyright law is involved. A DVD with an auto-editing script is not copying anything. If auto-edit scripts for DVD players are illegal, then the fast-forward button on your VCR is probably illegal as well!

Re:Classfication flags

[Zoxed]

> Parents may be more likely pay a bit more for these "pre-screened" DVDs

And others would pay more to be able to skip past those boring stories and get straight to the sex and violence :-)

Re:Classfication flags

[cei]

You'd be surprised, actually. The branching on the Alien Quadrilogy and The Incredibles was flawless. What's that, you say? No branching on The Incredbiles you say? Try watching it in another language and check out the opening sequence (or just about any scene that had text in-picture). You'll see a different title number listed, but you can bet they didn't encode the full movie twice on the same disc. Same goes for any of the Alien movies for Director vs Theatrical.

Re:Classfication flags

[Balorn]

I don't have either of those DVD sets, but are you sure that was done with branching? That seems like something that would be better handled using multiple angles (I believe, for example, the Yu Yu Hakusho DVDs use alternate angles for the opening and title cards depending on your language selection).

Re:Classfication flags

[cei]

I don't know the specifics for certain, but I would imagine that an angle would have to keep the same run-time, whereas a branched video could be a different length, which is definitely the case with the directors cuts of the Aliens films. Also, if it were really making use of the angle functions, why would they author it with a different title number? (Not saying you're wrong, but also somewhat ignorant of authoring limitations, myself.)

Re:Classfication flags

[danielrose]

Perhaps we can build this into something like MythTV, where persons can author a marker file which mythTV will download when you insert the DVD. A click of a button and girl on girl goodness is right there!

Re:Classfication flags

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a DVD that I got from Japan that does just that. However thanks to the settings on my DVD player it plays in english, both audio & subtitles. Annoying for me as the english dub sucks.
The movie, Ghost in The Shell.
Why the R2, the R1 suffers the Curse of Manga Entertainment.

Re:Classfication flags

[MindStalker]

They are trying to content that the auto-editing scripts are making money of their DVDs without permission. In the RIAA and MPAA view you can't make money in any manor in any way whatsoever off their work without their say so.

Re:Classfication flags

[MindStalker]

I mean contend not content.

Re:Classfication flags

[Devalia]

You forgot the most important one..

skip[sex(keanu reeves arse)]

Re:Classfication flags

[LoverOfJoy]

What's amusing is that they gripe about their vision being messed with and then a year later I see an edited version of the movie on TV anyway.

Re:Classfication flags

[pete-classic]

I don't know about the Incredibles, but I know that the Alien disc has both cuts in their entirety. (Which makes me wonder about the bitrate.)

-Peter

Re:Classfication flags

[wed128]

Amen. make that skip[sex(unnessessary jungle dance scene)]

Re:Classfication flags

[walt-sjc]

Yep, in fact, I do just that with dvd::rip and Myth TV. It's especially usefor for the evil Disney movies that want to force young children though 10 minutes of ads.

I originally thought about getting a big DVD changer, but Myth with a few big drives works better. Even the wife is happy.

Re:Classfication flags

[ConceptJunkie]

I don't think it would be unreasonable to put the scenes in at the level of production that was completed. After all, they are deleted scenes.

This is good news overall. I'm surprised there aren't more DVD players which simply ignore the "no FF/skip" functionality... or am I missing something?

Re:Classfication flags

[cei]

Not possible, because both the director cut and the theatrical cut each had exactly one layer break (at the same place). You can only have one real layer break on a dual layer disc. It had to be branched...

Re:Classfication flags

[pete-classic]

Maybe I just don't understand the title structure as well as I think I do ;-)

-Peter

Re:Classfication flags

[Sabotage]

I just rented "Meet the Fockers" last night, and it basically does this if you select "Extended Version" instead of "Theatrical Version".

Whenever a deleted scene would have appeared, it will stop the movie, show the deleted scene, and then pick back up where it left off. It's not at all seamless, and is a bit jarring, to the point where I turned it off after the third one so I could enjoy the rest of the movie. On a second pass, it might be worth it.

Re:Classfication flags

[HTH NE1]

Perhaps we can build this into something like MythTV, where persons can author a marker file which mythTV will download when you insert the DVD.

True, this could be used to find the portions of the movie they don't want you to watch in Utah. (I'm more interested in having markers for inserting additional material in DVDs.)

But I don't think some of the other parts of this bill (e.g. the "ART Act") are a good tradeoff for getting ClearPlay out from under their lawsuit. Don't sell out the rest of us by creating a three to ten year prison sentence for attempted file sharing because ClearPlay isn't confident they'll get a judgement in their favor.

(Yes, this story is a dupe with a different spin.)

Re:Classfication flags

[RedWizzard]

I haven't seen either of those yet, but I have seen it used in X-Men (the "1.5" edition), and it was bad there. As I said, if it's done on scene boundaries it can be done well, but you're not going to be able to do that to provide sanitized versions (as the post I replied to was saying). You'd have to basically duplicate each scene you were sanitizing in it's entirety, so you might as well just do two versions.

Re:Classfication flags

[Anonymous Coward]

The X-Files DVDs have had seamless branching for aaaages.

Re:Classfication flags

[mr_zorg]

Yeah, I too have seen branching put to such uses, but never in concert with parental controls. I even saw a disc once that did show deleted scenes in place, if you so desired (as a previous poster wanted). I wonder why these things aren't used more, perhaps because it's hard to do?

Makes sense

[Coopjust]

I can understand the FBI warning, but I don't pay $20 for a DVD to watch ads for movies that are crappy/have no interest in

Re:Makes sense

[zakezuke]

I can understand the FBI warning, but I don't pay $20 for a DVD to watch ads for movies that are crappy/have no interest in

I could live with previews once. I like previews for the most part esp thoughtful ones that might be similar to or catch the interest of someone who bought a given DVD. But if I rewatch a DVD I bought I don't want to wait no 5min to play the bloody flick.

Re:Makes sense

[ArcticCelt]

"...to watch ads for movies that are crappy/have no interest in"

And even when they are interesting, why do they force me to watch the damn spoiling trailer?

Re:Makes sense

[goneutt]

Thats why I've copied most of my DVD's, even the ones I own. If they expect me to wait through the five minutes of commercials they are wrong. The trick is to remove the "Prohibited user options" while making the copy.

A few weeks ago I rented a title that they must have been paranoid about getting copied: My normal DVD player couldn't read the disc. I had to make a copy (DVD-RW)to watch it.

Re:Makes sense

[Guspaz]

This could be solved by flash memory in DVD players. Simply store the DVD's unique ID, and if the previews have already been watched. The cost would be insignificant; 4MB of flash memory could store the information for a nearly a quarter million DVDs. I doubt there are even that many DVDs on the market.
Heck, 1MB would probably be enough. How much does 1MB of flash memory cost these days? Probably not enough to significantly raise the cost of the DVD player.

Personally I'd go a more flexible route; use 4MB of flash memory, and a rudimentary file system. Then allow a flexible amount of information to be stored per record. This could be used in new and very interesting ways. You can store a LOT of settings in half a dozen bytes.

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately for your selfish demands, content authors *do* have a moral right to control how their work is displayed or performed. Imagine you had a political website. Now imagine that some web browser was programmed to leave out certain words in your site, changing the message you are delivering. Would you be happy with that situation? I don't think so. But suddenly it is okay if it's someone *else's* expression that is being misrepresented, just because it's more convenient for you?

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

What software do you use to make copies? I've got a few DVDs that have unskippable crap at the start that I'd LOVE to get rid of. Just haven't found the right combination of software to rip and reburn them without the extra stuff.

Re:Makes sense

[theTerribleRobbo]

But you just _know_ that the designers will make it buzzword compliant and have the settings stored in platform-independant, open-source-enabled, synergistically-compliant XML, and the process have the settings for one DVD take up half a meg.

Re:Makes sense

[Thing 1]

I can understand the FBI warning [...]

Me too! It's doubleplusgood to be aware of dangerous three-letter-agencies!

Re:Makes sense

[mazarin5]

I wonder how long it would be before doubleclick and the like took advantage of this and your "web-enabled" DVD player peppered you with porno ads even though you popped in you copy of "Finding Nemo"

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

dvdshrink for windows is free and perfect. fastdvdcopy for mac is expensive, but the only decent thing out there for the platform, and if you have linux, I have no idea.

Re:Makes sense

[Lord Kano]

DVD Decrypter and DVD Shrink are a fantastic combination. If you are just going to be playing the disc in your computer, you can use DVD Idle Pro to remove the Prohibited User Operations.

LK

Re:Makes sense

[Zemran]

I can understand the FBI warning,

Then it is likely that you live in the US, but most of us in the rest of the world cannot understand why we have to wait for an irrelevant piece of foreign infomation to finish. Even worse though is when they do the international bit and force us to watch 8 irrelevant bits of information and maybe get the right one for our country included. It is all rubbish, we know it, we have read it before and having to sit through it each time we watch a DVD does not make us know any more about it.

Re:Makes sense

[Creedo]

Bull. It is a product. The moment they release that product, I can view it however I like. I can turn my TV upside down, I can watch it through a blue lens, I can fast forward through all of the boring bits.
Are you really suggesting that some author has the "moral right" to force me to not use the fast forward button?

Now imagine that some web browser was programmed to leave out certain words in your site, changing the message you are delivering.
I can do that now with a printout and a Sharpie. The fact is, if someone is going to filter your content, there is nothing you can do about it, short of not putting it out there.

Re:Makes sense

[Queer Boy]

But if I rewatch a DVD I bought I don't want to wait no 5min to play the bloody flick.

Depending on the annoying intros, it's worth it to me to pay the extra $3-$4 for the blank DVD I use to copy just the movie.

Re:Makes sense

[cpt kangarooski]

Unfortunately for your selfish demands, content authors *do* have a moral right to control how their work is displayed or performed.

No they do not. Such a position is utterly irreconcilable with the right of free speech, which has a more solid foundation. Moral rights are bullshit.

Imagine you had a political website. Now imagine that some web browser was programmed to leave out certain words in your site, changing the message you are delivering. Would you be happy with that situation? I don't think so. But suddenly it is okay if it's someone *else's* expression that is being misrepresented, just because it's more convenient for you?

Both are okay. Someone reading only every other word in something I say doesn't harm me. And since I may wish to do the same, I'm stuck having to let others do so too. It's kind of like how someone who truly believes in free speech will defend the right of others to say what they like, no matter how much they disagree with it. The people who only want non-objectionable things to be said are tyrants.

Plus, why do you think there is misrepresentation here? Generally, if you're looking at an edited version of something, it's not just obvious, but you've likely sought it out.

I for one can't wait for people to release EDLs that remove Jar-Jar from the Star Wars movies, or that skip the boring parts of action flicks so that they're all chase scenes, gunfights, and explosions.

Re:Makes sense

[koreaman]

DVD Decrypter + IFOEdit
Takes 2 DVDs, but I really don't care about having to switch. IFOEdit is also hella user unfreindly, you need to know what you're doing to use it. You *could* get a dual-layer burner, but the media is way too expensive to be feasible yet.

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

screw that. I'll just buy a DVD player that lets me skip what I want. Sounds like this bill will stop the studios from hosing a company that decides to sell me a better product.

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

"I can understand the FBI warning, but I don't pay $20 for a DVD to watch ads for movies that are crappy/have no interest in"
I find the FBI warning so provoking that it's a mayor cause for me to make copies of my own DVDs.
I mean I've paid, it's mine and I should be able to do what ever the f*ck I want to with it. Besides I live in Denmark, so I have no reason to listen to FBI-warnings.

Re:Makes sense

[Jeremi]

AFAIK some (most?) players have this now. At least, my player has surprised me more than once by "remembering" the seek point at which I had previously stopped playing a DVD, the next time I put same DVD in again, and resuming playback from the same point.

So I think the problem isn't a technical one, but rather a political one -- DVD players can remember this stuff, but are the DVD makers sufficiently motivated to take advantage of it?

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

> I can understand the FBI warning

Well, I can't.

I have 200+ DVDs. And a crappy kiss player. Each time it crashes and reload the DVD, I have to look at this stupid FBI warning.

And I am not even american. An I don't even live in the US. And, yes, I have a zone free DVD, because this is not illegal (at least where I live [you know, the 'freedom' country]).

UOP (User Operation Prevention) is evil. I now routinely DVDShrink to DVD-RW my own DVDs, just to avoid seeing this FBI warning.

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, every time you see those shitty un-skippable p.o.s' you get more and more interested in finding the DVD-R Torrent for the movie.

The music and movie industry are set to destroy themselves with their behaviour and they cant write cheques to pay off politicians fast enough in an attempt to 'enforce' the audiences to their products.

Re:Makes sense

[cliffski]

Well said. There is probably a good need for a website that lets people rate DVDs, purely on the content that is unskippable. If I got to amazon to buy a movie on DVD, it would be excellent to see a feature list that detailed how many unskippable ad clips and logos etc there were on the movie, and how long each one was.
I could then make an informed decision not to purchase the advertising. If this was commonplace, companies would be able to do some split A/B testing and realise just how poorly this unskippable crap affects their sales.

Re:Makes sense

[danielrose]

the settings for one DVD take up half a meg.
2 meg if to make it RAID-5, you'll need at least one extra DVD player if you want to enable MSCS, and at that stage you really should consider a SAN to store the DVD Informational Standard Settings!

Re:Makes sense

[123abc987]

Unfortunately for your selfish demands, content authors *do* have a moral right to control how their work is displayed or performed.

No they do not. Such a position is utterly irreconcilable with the right of free speech, which has a more solid foundation. Moral rights are bullshit. You are both wrong. Copyright holders have the exclusive right to display or perform their works publically (in the US) granted by the US copyright law. Meaning that it is illegal for ANYONE but the copyright holder to display these at all, in whole or in part.

and btw: Freedom of speech does not include the freedom to break laws.

Re:Makes sense

[ergo98]

Shrek 2 has several previews, including a long and terrible one for Madagascar featuring that horrendous "actor" Ben Stiller. I know this well because I watch this movie probably once every two weeks (young toddler daughter that loves Shrek).

Here's the fun part, though - as if stuffing a flash-in-the-pan preview at the front of a timeless movie wasn't bad enough, and then having the outright morally criminal audacity to disable to skip button (I'm just as outraged that my DVD player obeys the command, and when replacing it I'm going out of my way to find one that has an override mode. Fuck hollywood), for whatever reason when high-speed fast-forwarding it crashes both my real DVD player, and PowerDVD on the PC, probably 50% of the time. I'm not sure how it does that - whether bizarre coincidental quirk or a intentional feature of engineering - however it is infuriating.

Re:Makes sense

[Xugumad]

Odd, I can't understand why the FBI warning has to be no-skip. We're not going to decide to read it becase it can't be skipped, we're going to go make coffee instead.

On the subject of which, does anyone know any DVD players that always leave the fast forward button enabled?

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

On a related note, I've got a friend who runs a small ISP here ( Poland ). He configured his caching proxy to replace all {double|value}click crap with advertising images of his choosing.

Theoretically, he could write a piece of software that would modify webpages people downloaded in any way that pleases him. Sounds illegal to me ( or is it? ) , but they haven't caught him yet....

Re:Makes sense

[Gr8Apes]

All three of you are wrong.

Copyright holders only have the exclusive right to produce and distribute their works (US only - don't know about other countries)

Once you buy it, you can do anything to it you want privately, and in some cases, publicly. For instance:

• Buy a painting, spray paint over it, display it anywhere
• Buy several paintings, do a cut and paste montage, display anywhere
• Buy a book, selectively cut out words and/or paste in pages from another book, sell book
• Buy a film on film (you recall super 8 and the like?), cut out what you want, you can resell it if anyone wants to buy it
• Buy a CD or DVD, use a Sharpie to black out certain portions of the disk (let's pretend you know where the physical locations are). It effectively edits it, although your CD/DVD players probably won't play past them, at least not automatically. Then sell that disk, if anyone will buy it.

Note that I can legally do all the above (at least in the US) including reselling what I've done to the "copyrighted" work. What I cannot do is buy the work, duplicate it, and sell the duplicates (that's publication and distribution).

Things get trickier with audio and movies, public/commercial performance of those are restricted. But, you still have many rights as the owner of a copyrighted work. (At least, until the DMCA became law in the US)

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this mean I can now legally edit DVD's to remove items I feel are offensive such as 15 min of adverts, the menu system, FBI warnings, leading and trailing blank video, foriegn language's and subtitles, easter eggs, etc.?
When I slap that DVD-R into the DVD player all I see is pure un-adult-e-rated movie and no crap!

Re:Makes sense

[hawk]

Hey, knock that off.

Why, every time I see it, I get even further insight into the evil of, uhm, whatever they've warned me about these last couple of thousand times.

hawk

Re:Makes sense

[suitepotato]

It has also spread to porn DVDs. Vivid Video is one of the biggest offenders. As much as fifteen minutes of ads for other flicks you DIDN'T want before you get to watch the one you DID. If even they don't get it, we're soooo screwed.

One of the other tricks is to edit the mpeg video together such that the transition from ad vid to content vid falls in the middle of what would ordinarily be either a content chapter and segment or an ad one. This means you get pieces of ads in the content if you try to rip them.

Making me resent your product by intrusive advertising, what a way to get me to buy it.

Re:Makes sense

[billcopc]

DivX anyone ? (by circuit city)

The video industry forces us to sit through previews and commercials in our own homes. Do you really believe they will use flash memory with responsibility and give top priority to the user's experience ?

I have this bridge I'd like to sell you.

Re:Makes sense

[DigitalCrackPipe]

I do live in the US, and I get to see the extra bits on a lot of DVDs. It doesn't really matter what country the warning is for, or what language it's in. All of the warnings are useless. I'd say if you have the urge to fast forward through it, you already know what it is well enough.

Even worse, my dvd player won't even tell me that I can't fast forward. It tells me that the action *may* be prohibited, depending on the disc. What kind of wishy-washy crap is that?

Re:Makes sense

[Inebrius]

"Imagine you had a political website. Now imagine that some web browser was programmed to leave out certain words in your site, changing the message you are delivering. Would you be happy with that situation? I don't think so. But suddenly it is okay if it's someone *else's* expression that is being misrepresented, just because it's more convenient for you?"

You seem to be missing the point - this should not be an issue if YOU are in control of your web browser. The problem is when someone else controls the abilty to choose what we watch, how we watch it, or even what filters we choose to apply. If you choose to watch a movie while blinking continuously, or even use a movie to help fall asleep, the movie studios, actors, producers, directors, and corporations should have no say and no contol over how you experience content they created, which you now own a legal copy of.

If Internet Explorer or Firefox automatically applied filtering, I would have a problem with it. If they offered user controlled selective filtering, I'd appreciate it. And if someone else chooses to view this post via user applied filters, so be it.

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

How much does 1MB of flash memory cost these days? Probably not enough to significantly raise the cost of the DVD player.

However, it's not just the memory.
There's also the supporting circuitry.
Oh, and additional coding (although that's a one-off).

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Quoth the parent: Are you really suggesting that some author has the "moral right" to force me to not use the fast forward button?

Respondeth Principle Skinner: Yes. Yes, I am.

Re:Makes sense

[cpt kangarooski]

Copyright holders have the exclusive right to display or perform their works publically (in the US) granted by the US copyright law. Meaning that it is illegal for ANYONE but the copyright holder to display these at all, in whole or in part.

True, but do note that there are limits even to that.

At any rate, that right has no moral foundation -- it's amoral utilitarianism, which is fine with me. I merely object to the idea that authors have inherent rights to their work.

Re:Makes sense

[cpt kangarooski]

Copyright holders only have the exclusive right to produce and distribute their works (US only - don't know about other countries)

That's wrong. I suggest reading 17 USC 106 and 106A for a start.

Re:Makes sense

[Gr8Apes]

Yeah, there's more, but they all revolve around this key concept.

Not intended like you suggest

[mr100percent]

People should be allowed to use technology to watch movies "their way" in their own home

Well, that's a nice sentiment, but the bill (the Family Movie Act of 2005) appears to mainly be aimed at allowing your DVD to skip past nude scenes and the like. A number of family and conservative groups supported this measure. Perhaps they're also annoyed at being forced to watch the previews that some DVDs force people to play through as well.

While I think it's a step in the right direction, Congress isn't going to do away with region coding, CSS, and the like. Look at the other bill in the link, the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005, also noted in an earlier /. article. I suspect Orrin Hatch would support this bill, but I don't think he'll go for less copy protection. Does anyone know if he voted on this bill and how?

Re:Not intended like you suggest

[swschrad]

the only way this congress is going to give you the ability to watch the way you want (not the way they want, or the movie companies want) is if you pony up and outbid them for the congresscritters' attention.

this is truly the best government that money can buy.

Re:Not intended like you suggest

[oneiros27]

Someone'll just figure out a way for it to do the exact opposite of what the censor intended. Sort of like Jeff, in Coupling, where he was explaining the difficulty in following the plot in porn videos:

Well, it's kind of hard to tell isn't it 'cos you tend to fast forward if anyone's dressed. Sometimes I forget and do that with proper films. I can get through a lot of movies in an evening

Re:Not intended like you suggest

[JanneM]

Of course, this also allows you to skip those embarassing and pointless "family values" and "patriotic expressions" scenes that are plastered on far too often and get straight to the violent action. You could probably shorten a typical Hollywood flick by 25% this way without losing the point of the movie.

Re:Not intended like you suggest

[elgaard]

> Congress isn't going to do away with region coding, CSS

Maybe not. But producers of DVD-players could still implement CSS and allow their custumers to skip ads, FBI warnings, etc.

I only view DVD's on my Linux computer with MPlayer, don't worry about region codes and skip whatever I want.

Re:Not intended like you suggest

[Anonymous Coward]

Please stop using the word "congresscritter". Whatever residual cleverness it may have at one point (zero, in fact), that day is long past.

Re:Not intended like you suggest

[iabervon]

It's not too uncommon for movies to be played with previews for movies that some of the audience might object to. If the DVDs are similar, some of the scenes that this bill is about letting you skip are probably in the previews. For that matter, I haven't heard of DVDs which prevent you from skipping parts of the actual movie (which would just be strange; if you want to skip the content and need something else to watch that much sooner, why would they stop you?), so this is probably most particular to the nude scenes in the previews.

Re:Not intended like you suggest

[Frank Palermo]

Actually, following the House bill's description on thomas.loc.gov leads to a page, showing that Sen. Hatch is the main sponsor of the Senate versions of this legislation.

I would guess that as Sen. Hatch is the one who originally introduced the bill to the Senate, he would vote in its favor when the time comes... assuming of course that he's not too offended by any changes made in the House.

-Frank

Re:Not intended like you suggest

[Anonymous Coward]

Nude scenes in the previews? I don't know about you, but previews on DVDs I've seen tend to not be so explicit as to have *nude scenes*.

Wait a second... is this bill so that families can rent adult videos and skip those dirty previews? I'm slightly confused.

Re:Not intended like you suggest

[jgman]

Orrin Hatch serves in the Senate, not the House. As such, he will not vote on "this" bill. However, a handy check of THOMAS, the Library of Congress's congressional tracking service shows that Orrin Hatch Sponsored the Senate version of this bill s. 167.

S. 167 passed the Senate by Unanimous Consent on February 1, 2005. Just needs the President's signature and its a law.

Re:Not intended like you suggest

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

Sadly there is no way I can mod this up to 10- Insightful

Re:Not intended like you suggest

[mr100percent]

You're missing the point. Clearplay sells software that sanitizes (ie. edits naughty bits out of) movies. Under the old law, that breaks the copyright and DMCA or whatever. This law, backed by family groups, allows them legally to skip those parts of the film without illegally circumventing any copy-protection devices in the way.

Re:Not intended like you suggest

[nautical9]

Someone'll just figure out a way for it to do the exact opposite of what the censor intended.

Kind of like the guy who put up NWA's Straight Outta Compton, but reduced to just the explicit content. (warning: flash content)

Re:Not intended like you suggest

[ampmouse]

I have some older dvd's and after geting a new dvd player (with all that CSS crap) I can no longer skip around in the MAIN MOVIE. It is very annoying.

Re:Not intended like you suggest

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh? I've never heard the term before today.

Re:Not intended like you suggest

[pipingguy]

The term, "Congresscritter" was coined by Rush Limbaugh (unless I'm mistaken). Generally speaking, a "critter" is a small, furry and possibly cute animal. Melding professional politicians with something PETA would approve-of is a bad combination and possibly very un-American.

Just hearing the word gives me the warm fuzzies and makes me want to approve of trillion dollar government expenditures.

Re:Not intended like you suggest

[FidelCatsro]

Actualy im fairly sure you pay for a better one ;) .

Re:Not intended like you suggest

[danielrose]

Now that shit is mutha fuckin cool!

Re:Not intended like you suggest

[hawk]

He may well use it, but it's such an obvious phrase that I'm certain that it's been used repeatedly by those who have never heard it elsewhere. I'm reasonably certain that I'd never heard it before starting to use it . . .

hawk

Re:Not intended like you suggest

[walt-sjc]

Yep. I used it myself in a newspaper letter to the editor about 15 years ago. The bastards edited it to "congressional representative".

Re:Not intended like you suggest

[Anonymous Coward]

> Orrin Hatch serves in the Senate, not the House. As such, he will not vote on "this" bill.

He might be able to vote on the Bill. If the Bill passes the House, it will go to the Senate, where Hatch will have an opportunity to vote on it.

You mean like

[qurk]

I spent a $100 premium on shipping and on the esoteric faster over what guys in Japan would have to pay, now that I have it because I bought it..... Can I actually put it in my DVD player and push play and watch it? Yes I know I am outside of that region. I payed a premium to be able to have it in hands. Can I watch it? Or do I need to buy another DVD player just to not circumvent the laws. What the hell.

Re:You mean like

[Lehk228]

AC troll is right about region coding not being the law, just hollywood being greedy, though I doubt that it has anything to do with ethnicity.

Re:You mean like

[Anonymous Coward]

People can convert to Judaism. This means that a Jew is not an ethnic label but rather a religious one.

Re:You mean like

[loupgarou21]

You can circumvent the region coding on a lot of DVD players, a quick search on google should provide you with a lot of information on it. And don't bother using any of the services that require you to pay for the information, just look around, you'll find it for free.

Re:You mean like

[Grommet - Space Cade]

www.doom9.net dvdshrink/dvddecryptor....tada cut back to dvd...no region codes....

Re:You mean like

[Lehk228]

actually it is both, there is the religion, judiasm and the jewish race which are non-exclusively intersecting sets of people.

Re:You mean like

[Anonymous Coward]

I spent a $100 premium on shipping and on the esoteric faster over what guys in Japan would have to pay, now that I have it because I bought it..... Can I actually put it in my DVD player and push play and watch it? Yes I know I am outside of that region. I payed a premium to be able to have it in hands. Can I watch it? Or do I need to buy another DVD player just to not circumvent the laws. What the hell.

(Score -1, Incoherent)

Re:You mean like

[mr100percent]

I THINK he's trying to gripe over the fact that he can't play his imported Japanese DVDs with his different region code DVD player.

Re:You mean like

[zakezuke]

I spent a $100 premium on shipping and on the esoteric faster over what guys in Japan would have to pay, now that I have it because I bought it....

1. Get a region free player. Many start under $50 in the US, other countries you can hardly buy a player that supports region restrictions.
2. Copy that disc. ANYdvd springs to mind.
3. Move to the region of your disc, or to a region that doesn't sell crippled players.

Region Codes serve no purpose but to restrict free trade. Many claim it's in violation of the WTO and I for one would love to see this verified.
It results in market for region free players and pirated discs esp in countries that made the sale of non region free players illegal like NZ.

Re:You mean like

[Anonymous Coward]

They do not alter or sell DVD's they sell a device that is capable of altering a movie as it is being played on their device.
If you play the same DVD in any other device it plays as the MPAA intended.
For $4.95 a month the device downloads content list for recently released movies. If you play the movie in their device it bleeps out swear words and skips graphic adult content etc. and if you place the same DVD into any other player it doesn't.

Government.

[EverStoned]

WHY is the government involved in this? I honestly can't think of a single reason why government intervention is better than letting the market sort all this out.

Re:Government.

[Mark_MF-WN]

Because the market is incapable of sorting out monopolies/oligopolies, cartels, and the other techniques used by immoral businesses to gouge customers.

Re:Government.

[vyrus128]

(-1 Libertarian)

The government has to get involved in permitting stuff like this because they previously MADE IT ILLEGAL with the DMCA. The market isn't likely to help with that.

Re:Government.

[bman08]

The government is involved for the same reason my gardner trims the hedges; that's what they're paid for.

Because religious nuts started modding movies, the DGA and MPAA said you can't do it and they both ran crying to their pet lawmakers.

What I want to know is whether or not this can all be undone by a shrinkwrap license. If I were to make and distribute a movie do I have the right to explicitly forbid it from being viewed in any way other than the way I intend if that is so stated on the outside of the packaging.

Re:Government.

[Varitek]

There is no "market" in DVD player standards, only manufacturers licensed by a cartel^Wconsortium.

Re:Government.

[Stevyn]

Well, FTFA:

"ClearPlay and other similar services were sued by the movie studios, the Director's Guild of America and 13 individual directors for copyright violations and for altering their work. The technology companies filed a motion for summary judgment and were awaiting a ruling in the 10th District Court in Colorado."

Apparently, the government is already involved in this. Without the laws that Congress pushed in the first place, this wouldn't be an issue.

Re:Government.

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh.. Who do you think put CSS on DVDs to begin with? All sorts of DRM on music? Copy-protection on games? It wasn't the government for sure. And you want the market to sort this out, why? So the industry can push even more restrictions on fair use? You can thank the government for the fact that we actually have fair use at all!

Re:Government.

[aichpvee]

Because the people who own the government are in the minority and don't control purchasing in the market.

Re:Government.

[arodland]

Government, on the other hand, excels at creating and supporting them! :)

Re:Government.

[fimbulvetr]

Why does he get a -1 for being a Libertarian?
It seems to me that if this guys ideals were any kind of compass, the DCMA wouldn't have MADE ANYTHING ILLEGAL, because the government would stay the hell out of it.
Unless, of course, it was influenced by special interest groups...whoa!

Seems to me that this specific situation has no "Republican", "Democrat" or "Libertarian" fix. Forgive me for the gross use of those labels. I find it repulisive that people would so much as consider that the opinions of 300 Million people could be similtaneosly aggregated in to 2 or even 3 kinds of thought.

Re:Government.

[Combuchan]

(-1 Circular logic)

He's lambasting the fact that Government has gotten into arenas in which he believes it has no absolutely no business in--originally the DMCA and now this.

If you noted the spirit of the grandparent, market forces and corporate innovation should make both Acts completely unncessary.

Re:Government.

[vyrus128]

Yeah, sorry... I take back the -1. I'm just too used to hearing people jump into every discussion about regulation with "the market could do this better!"

Re:Government.

[EverStoned]

I wouldn't have a problem with this. Being an intelligent person, I can bypass those encryptions. It's a company's own responsibility to protect it's content. If they make encryptions we can't break, they win. If they can't, they lose and should try again. Either way, no government is needed.

Re:Government.

[Mark_MF-WN]

Well, let's just say that governments excel at a lot of things, many of them of questionable virtue. But monopoly-busting is one of the good things that governments occasionally rouse themselves from their corrupt stupour for long enough to do.

Re:Government.

[Anonymous Coward]

If I were to make and distribute a movie do I have the right to explicitly forbid it from being viewed in any way other than the way I intend if that is so stated on the outside of the packaging.

No, because the law of the land quite clearly says that the person who buys the disc and pays for it, with money that they earned by hand or by brain, has the right to do whatever the f**k they want with it. Once you have taken their pound notes, it's no longer your property and so it's got f**k-all to do with you.

Re:Government.

[wcrowe]

For the same reason that the government gets involved in sanitation and road construction. The market is not capable of "sorting out" every issue.

Re:Government.

[hondo77]

Because in this country we actually have parents so stupid that they can't differentiate betweeen the letters "G", "PG", and "R". Apparently these stupid parents plop their children in front of a PG-rated movie and are shocked to find out that it is not completely suitable for their children. Having not enough sense to exercise their parental guidance in the first place, they now look to someone else to provide the guidance they couldn't. Since the right feels that the government should legislate morality, the government is the logical choice for them.

Parent Is A Verb Too

[Horrortaxi]

Maybe parents could go the low tech way and just monitor their children and use the word "no" once in a while? No, god forbid they have to spend time with the little bastards.

Re:Parent Is A Verb Too

[hungrygrue]

Yup. As far as I know there is no regulation banning the use of the "OFF" button on the TV. For that matter, getting rid of the damn thing completely is also a perfectly good option.

Re:Parent Is A Verb Too

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should a parent be limited to either ON or OFF? It seems to me that one of the themes here on /. is that people should have choices about what to do with the content they purchase. I see no reason why this should not be applied to parenting as well.

Re:Parent Is A Verb Too

[Lisandro]

It's sad the parent poster was modded overrated. His point can't be stressed enough - if people beleive kids will be better because you can choose if they can see or not 10 minutes of tits in a movie, we're in bad shape. Never mind watching titties might actually be good to them; can't you simply watch over their actions a bit?

No matter what, you just can't shield your kids in a bubble and think that's all there is to it. Teaching them right and wrong and (god forbid!) paying atention to their actions is what parenting's all about.

Re:Parent Is A Verb Too

[Lisandro]

Sorry, bitched at the wrong post - he's got a well deserved +4 Int. now.

Re:Parent Is A Verb Too

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. And maybe voters could just monitor their politicians and vote "no" once in a while, too. Oh damn, these same parents vote also? Now we're in trouble.

Re:Parent Is A Verb Too

[Vombatus]

10 minutes

And here I was thinking that Americans were offended at even the slightest flash of flesh - even if caused by a wardrobe malfunction

Re:Parent Is A Verb Too

[aardvarkjoe]

Well, maybe he was modded that way because that's exactly the same post that gets posted a dozen times anything vaguely related to censorship comes up. Or because, in his rush to get the easy karma, his post really has very little to do with the discussion. Of course, if I felt the need to moderate it down, at least I'd have the guts to mark it redundant or offtopic -- but a downmod is hardly unwarranted.

Re:Parent Is A Verb Too

[zakezuke]

Maybe parents could go the low tech way and just monitor their children and use the word "no" once in a while? No, god forbid they have to spend time with the little bastards.

I guess when you were a kid you never woke up before your parents to watch something. Gawd I did... mostly cartoons that got moved to that odd hour but I can see how parents with a large library of porno would want their players to restrict access to it.

Re:Parent Is A Verb Too

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe parents could go the low tech way and just monitor their children and use the word "no" once in a while? No, god forbid they have to spend time with the little bastards.

Maybe parents could go the low tech way and just monitor their children and use the word "no" once in a while instead of locking up the family handguns? No, god forbid they have to spend time with the little bastards making sure they don't get into the handgun cabinet.

Re:Parent Is A Verb Too

[Queer Boy]

Why should a parent be limited to either ON or OFF? It seems to me that one of the themes here on /. is that people should have choices about what to do with the content they purchase.

If we were talking about a household cleaning item that kids liked to drink and it poisoned them, I doubt you'd have the same lame attitude. Right now parents too often have the choice of making everyone else raise their kid. I've said it before and I'll say it again, there would be a lot better parenting in this country if parents were held liable for laws their kids broke.

Re:Parent Is A Verb Too

[nytmare]

So you're saying that all movies should be rated G? That's the dumbest idea I've ever heard.

Re:Parent Is A Verb Too

[evilviper]

No matter what, you just can't shield your kids in a bubble and think that's all there is to it. Teaching them right and wrong and (god forbid!) paying atention to their actions is what parenting's all about.

Why does this subject always stir up the idiots?

Let's allow alcohol to be sold to minors, since, after all, you should be watching over your kids... right?

This is just one more tool for a parent to use. Nobody ever said it's use was in exclusion of actual parenting.

Re:Parent Is A Verb Too

[Lisandro]

No, you said that. In fact, that's the very reason that movie ratings are there in the first place - so you, as a parent, have a parameter to decide what to show or not your kids. There's no need for "software enabling parents to skip over the sex and violence in Hollywood DVDs."

Re:Parent Is A Verb Too

[Lisandro]

Oh, grow up. I'm not talking drugs or guns; these are fucking movies on DVD, which is a format crippled enough as it is.

We've had movie ratings for years, why do we need stuff like ClearPlay (which, by the way, they're integrating directly into players)? You mean to tell me that you want your kid to watch R+ rated movies... but without the "naughty"? Please.

Re:Parent Is A Verb Too

[ivano]

actually if we sold alcohol to minors we might not have the problems we have now. Kids should learn to drink alcohol around the dinner table not at someones' weekend-when-the-parents-are-away party or hey-I-just-got-my-drivers-license-let's-paaaarty. The US law of 21 is such a puritan hangover that's it's laughable. Nearly all countries that are more relaxed about alcohol (eg Italy, France, well any non Anglo-American country) has far less teenage drink problems than the US or UK.

We seem to live in a society that we try and do the utmost worse at solving a problem: solve teen pregnancy by not talking about condoms; solve teen drinking and drug taking by putting people in jail. Either we're very stupid or we are downright being lead by purely evil people who want the worse for us at all times.

ciao

Re:Parent Is A Verb Too

[91degrees]

I agree.

But I don't think it should be up to me how parents bring up their kids. If they think technology should be used to protect their children then they have the right to use it.

Re:Parent Is A Verb Too

[Scorchio]

I'm not sure how things were in your household, but I don't know any parents who keep their porno library on display next to the tv for anyone to pick up and play. These parents you speak of - in which reality have they been waiting for the DVD technology to refuse to play the films to the wrong person, instead of just storing the questionable disks on a high shelf in the back of a locked closet in their own room?

Re:Parent Is A Verb Too

[hawk]

Given the frequency with which the "naughty" is just plain gratuitious: yes, I do.

hawk

Re:Parent Is A Verb Too

[poot_rootbeer]

can't you simply watch over their actions a bit?

This sentiment seems to come largely from people who have never had children.

Think back to your own childhood. Did your parents keep you within eye and earshot at all times, up until you turned 18? No. Parents hold their children close at times, and allow them to roam at others.

No parent has time to pre-screen all the culture their children will be exposed to for appropriateness, especially in a time like this where both parents have to work, and media is generated and distributed in real time. That's why I'm in favor of programming ratings, V-chips, CAPalert, ClearView, and any other tools available to parents to help them guide their children.

Re:Parent Is A Verb Too

[Anonymous Coward]

It's almost funny that this post has been rated "insightful". Someone save us from the childless parenting experts.

"I've said it before and I'll say it again, there would be a lot better parenting in this country if parents were held liable for laws their kids broke."

You can stop saying it. Parents are legally responsible for the actions of their children.

Re:Parent Is A Verb Too

[Lisandro]

So why do you want to show them R+ rated material in the first place?

Re:Parent Is A Verb Too

[NichardRixon]

"It's sad the parent poster was modded overrated. His point can't be stressed enough - if people beleive kids will be better because you can choose if they can see or not 10 minutes of tits in a movie, we're in bad shape. Never mind watching titties might actually be good to them; can't you simply watch over their actions a bit?

"No matter what, you just can't shield your kids in a bubble and think that's all there is to it. Teaching them right and wrong and (god forbid!) paying atention to their actions is what parenting's all about."

Well said.

This is reminiscent of the uproar that got Howard Stern banned from Clearchannel radio stations. Clearchannnel's CEO was livid with moral outrage over Stern's foul remarks. It evidently didn't bother him, however, that his stations were broadcasting commercials for so called "non-profit" credit repair outfits that aim to swindle everything they can from those who can least afford it.

Sometimes I think I must have missed something. I mean, when did it happen that the policing of those who utter four letter words became a priority over stopping con operations? In fact, we evidently don't try to stop them at all, judging by the frequency that Clearchannel continues to broadcast the commercials. What does that teach our children? What puts them at greater risk?

The prudes in this country need to get their priorities staightened out. Let's take care of the real problems first. Once that's done you might be able to justify spending time fighting the use of dirty words. Doing it the other way around it reprehensible.

Re:Parent Is A Verb Too

[hawk]

I don't.

Most of the movie is only PG, with the R parts gratuitiously and irrelevantly thrown in to lure teenage boys into the theater.

That, and some are R for other reasons, such as intensity, which may oor may not be approriate for the individual chinld.

With mine, the "turn your head" bit works just fine. I don't really need this technology. I'm reacting to the suggestion that parenting is the issue here--technologies like these actually give *more* options to the parent who is actually there and involve,d not less.

hawk

Re:Parent Is A Verb Too

[iminplaya]

Either we're very stupid or we are downright being lead by purely evil people who want the worse for us at all times.

No, they could care less about us. They only care about their own well being, and how we relate to that. Everthing else is just the result. However, if you live in a country where you can vote the evil people out of office, I would suggest that you and your neighbors do so.

...solve teen drinking and drug taking by putting people in jail.

Prisons are very profitable for the owner/operator/stockholder. You can expect much more of this. These prisons don't make money if they sit empty.

Re:Parent Is A Verb Too

[jdbear]

While I can't be with my children 100% of the time, I (or my wife) do screen just about every single minute of TV or video they watch. Of course, my kids are well behaved enough to know there are certain things we don't want them to watch, and now "self censor," so my job is a lot easier.

I don't really have any issue with them seeing flesh. What I want the protected against is blatant (and disturbing) violence. It's strange to me that it's okay to show people enjoying murder and torture, but one slip of a nipple, and everyone goes into a tizzy.

I've seen things on broadcast TV that give me nightmares, I certainly don't want my kids subjected to that.

Re:Parent Is A Verb Too

[evilviper]

actually if we sold alcohol to minors we might not have the problems we have now. Kids should learn to drink alcohol around the dinner table not at someones' weekend-when-the-parents-are-away party or hey-I-just-got-my-drivers-license-let's-paaaarty.

Please explain how selling alcohol to minors is going to get them to drink around the dinner table more, as opposed to at under-age parties.

Re:Parent Is A Verb Too

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha, CAPalert?

"EVERY SINGLE MOVIE EVER MADE IS A YELLOW OR RED ALERT EXCEPT MARY POPPINS AND THAT ONE OTHER MOVIE"

I wouldn't even take CAPalert's advice on how to make a movie 'review' site that's wildly oversensitive to the point of being useless.

technology

[Arctic Dragon]

"People should be allowed to use technology to watch movies "their way" in their own home, he said."

It would be nice if they would apply a similar that would apply to music. Keep DRM and other restrictions out of movies and music!

yeah right.

[d2_m_viant]

Haha, them giving us more freedom? What a joke.

These are some of the same politicians that signed the DMCA into law. If it weren't for people like DVD Jon fighting for our rights as consumers, we would be on the end of the leash of politicians, who in turn are on the end of the leash of big business.
It's up to us to fight for our rights, they're not going to simply hand us over a "less strict" policy out of good will.

This doesn't mean they can make the DVD players.

[VidEdit]

Although it may be legal to create a DVD player that can be programed to skip sections, that doesn't mean that the industry has to license CSS to a maker who wants to do this in the future.

Under the new proposed HD DVD standard, any player manufacturer's key can be rescinded for future HD DVD releases, so DRM may prevent the ability to enable would-be bowdlerizers from implementing their schemes.

Meh

[PunkOfLinux]

Perhaps he's right. PARENTS : WATCH UR KIDS This might be the best day to say "Video games don't cause violence"

The ethics of ads-skipping

[Lord Satri]

I was planning to try a post on this issue, but this article is perfect. These DVDs would allow to skip ads: how does this stands in terms of ethics?

Personally, I use ad-blocking in browsers, if I had a TV (I don't :-), I would not feel bad about using Tivo. I wouldn't feel bad either to use this DVD feature the article is about.

I had an interesting discussion with a friend, he was telling me that by using ad-blocking on the web, I was treatening good wepages themselves by denying them their source of revenue to pay for bandwitdh et al. Same story with the DVD and Tivo, the price would go up since the ads would have no effect. He saif ad-blocking is legal, but wrong in terms of ethics. I disagree, I believe ad-blocking websites will make things evolve and improve. Yes, maybe -some- free websites could be jeopardized, but that's how life is.

What do you think?!

Re:The ethics of ads-skipping

[pete6677]

That's bullshit, a DVD is something you pay for so that you don't have to watch ads. The price is set according to how much people are willing to pay, not how much the company can make on ads. What if HBO started interrupting movies with ads and said it was in place of a rate increase? I doubt that would go over very well since the main appeal of HBO is the lack of ads. When an ad is shown anyplace, there is never a guarantee that it will be watched attentively by every potential viewer, only that it will be put in a place where people CAN see it, so ad blocking is not unethical by any means.

Re:The ethics of ads-skipping

[pentalive]

I believe ad-blocking websites will make things evolve and improve.

Blocking simple banner ads led to moving banner ads. Blocking moving banner ads led to flashing game banner ads.
Blocking flashing game banner ads led to system dialog box looking ads.
Blocking system dialog looking ads led to pop-up and pop-under banner ads.

Your right! things are evolving...

Re:The ethics of ads-skipping

[Jimmy The Leper]

How is blocking ads any different then putting a "no soliciters" sign on your door? Or putting your name on the do-not-call list?

Ads are an apsect of the world that we can attempt to filter out. I can wear yellow glasses if I don't like the colour blue, and it doesn't matter what any hooloovoo thinks, I can still do it.

Re:The ethics of ads-skipping

[Anonymous Coward]

Ethics is an easy call. It is my electricity powering my device playing media that I own ( or using bandwidth that I have paid for ) in the comfort of my livingroom.

Ergo, my opinion on the matter regarding watching ads or not, fast-forwarding or not, and so on is the indisputable edict of a supreme dictator. The whining of ad companies, the MPAA, the actors guild, or anyone else is utterly irrelevant and shall be ignored.

They may choose to lease some of the rights of ownership from me for the low low price of $500,000 per annum per title however. So far they have chosen not to purchase this power of authority though, so they can all pretty much SFTU.

Re:The ethics of ads-skipping

[Wizarth]

Assuming that HBO is some sort of cable channel or company, then a similar thing happened over here. Basically, the cable companies made a HUGE advertising campaign about how good cable (and the movie channels in particular) were because they didn't need ads, they made their money off subscription fees.

Fast forward to today. As many ads as free-to-air, although I think they still play movies in one piece... on the pay-extra movie channels.

In terms of ad-blocking, remember: They are generally paid per click, not per view, but sign-up for X views. If there was no chance you'd have clicked the ad, then they have lost nothing, and have not wasted a pre-paid impression. That said, I try and only adblock servers I don't like, and leave the ones I don't mind too much, rather then blocking them all indiscriminately. Especially if it's a good site that gives good content for free (such as many amateur web comics).

For reference: I'm Australia, referring to Optus/Austel/Foxtel, and I am not a customer (or consumer) of cable TV.

Re:The ethics of ads-skipping

[Digital Pizza]

I'm always amused by people who speak of the "social contract" with those who derive revenue from advertising, and who consider ad-skipping immoral.

You see, I don't consider it my job to watch commercials. Sometimes I watch them (if they're funny or have a hot babe), but other times I go to the bathroom, grab a snack, veg out, or whatever, and I don't feel one bit guilty about it. The very idea strikes me as silly. If the program or website is freely available, then the "content" producers are simply taking a gamble that the advertising will be interesting enough to work. If not, then tough luck.

This is (supposedly) a free market; if their advertising-based business model doesn't work, then if they're smart they'll go to a subscription-based one. That's fine with me. I'll ether decide that the subscription is worth it, or I'll find something better to do with my time.

Re:The ethics of ads-skipping

[Creepy Crawler]

And I block based via server block lists at the router. Then those very DNS names that are banned are looped back via a local wildcard DNS listing substituting a blank 1x1 pixel image.

Ive a few thousand ad servers on my block list.. And I nary get an ad a week. And once I get that, I submit it and block it too.

Re:The ethics of ads-skipping

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing you have to consider is how sites get paid for ads.
most dont get paid per page load, but per ad clicked. I will not click ads that i block, so blocking them denies NO money that the site would have made otherwise. On sites where I am likely to click an ad or two, i do not block them.
often, if an ad is interesting, i will leave it, even if i dont click, such as babes in bikini's, except at work, where thats a bad thing.
Point is, it is my decision what ads i click, so blocking is just my way of saying, i wont be clicking on you.

Re:The ethics of ads-skipping

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the owners of the website you are cheating out of ad revenue still have to pay for the bandwidth you used. Not to mention any other costs associated with generating their content.

Re:The ethics of ads-skipping

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, boo-fucking-hoo!

Sucks to be them.

I block ads, I block popups, I even block annoying background images. I block everything that gets in the way of me focusing on the content, because I view webpages the way I want to.

Re:The ethics of ads-skipping

[Redwin]

"the price would go up since the ads would have no effect"

I don't know about you but ads have no effect on me anyway. Anyone else been compelled to buy something they've seen in an advert lately?
The ONLY thing that has really got my attention for something is usually a film trailer, however I've usually found out about it from friends before I've seen the trailer and decided to watch it anyway.
TV, movie and Internet advertising are entirely pointless in my opinion as I've got so used to tuning them out that I would probably miss an advert that would interest me if it ever did appear!

Re:The ethics of ads-skipping

[sigmund lahn]

When companies spend money advertising, they have to GET that money somewhere. And it's the consumers that's paying. So saying something is free because it's ad-paid is actually bull.

That does not render this discussion irellevant, mind you.

Re:The ethics of ads-skipping

[FireFury03]

These DVDs would allow to skip ads: how does this stands in terms of ethics?

Well, I pay money for a DVD - why should I be forced to sit through adverts every time I want to watch a movie I _paid for_? I don't see a problem with this.

I use ad-blocking in browsers

So do I. However, I have strict ethics about what I block. I block flashing animated ads, Flash ads and popups. These are all adverts that I find extremely annoying. On the other hand, I allow static (or not annoying) graphical banner ads, and text ads (google adsense, etc).
I realise that the pages I'm reading are supported by adverts and I want to continue supporting these sites, but I won't put up with stuff designed specifically to annoy me. Hey, Google's ads are unobtrusive and _targetted_ so I leave them there - they're sometimes even useful.

if I had a TV (I don't :-), I would not feel bad about using Tivo

TV ads are another thing like web ads, except I can't be so selective. 10 years ago, a lot of the ads were funny and worth watching. I also don't remember them being repeated quite as frequently. These days most of the TV ads are designed to annoy people (yeah, it works - the name of the thing they're selling gets lodged firmly in my brain... sadly for them it gets lodged in the "never buy this crap" category). The TV ads are shown at a louder volume than the show I'm watching, they're really annoying and the same ads get repeated every break so there's no variety. If the majority of ads were entertaining instead of being extremely annoying and repetetive then I'd probably watch them, but as it is I just skip the lot using MythTV.

I just hope that my actions of blocking stuff that's designed to be annoying will eventually make the advertisers realise that pissing people off is not the best way to sell stuff. However, with the introduction of popup blockers in browsers we've seen the advertisers finding new ways of creating annoying popups and with the introduction of spam filters we've seen the spammers attempting to circumvent them so it seems the message just isn't getting through.

The worst thing is that the only reason they're still using these advertising techniques is because they work - somewhere, some moron is buying products from popups, spam, direct marketting, etc. In my experience that person is often the same person who complains about the popups, spam and direct marketting in the first place.

Re:The ethics of ads-skipping

[fearofcarpet]

I had an interesting discussion with a friend, he was telling me that by using ad-blocking on the web, I was treatening good wepages themselves by denying them their source of revenue to pay for bandwitdh et al. Same story with the DVD and Tivo, the price would go up since the ads would have no effect. He saif ad-blocking is legal, but wrong in terms of ethics.

Ad-filtering is an anchient Darwinian dance. They (marketing folks) find more and more places to stick ads. We (the consumer) certainly have the right to avoid those ads, and they the right to make them harder to avoid. If your friend had his way, the web would be simply impossible to use as there would be hundreds of pop-up ads every time you clicked on a link. The pop-up ad needed to die, and as more and more people figured out how to block pop-up ads (by downloading Mozilla ;) ) natural selection started to kill them off.

I am a relentless ad-blocker. I feel like the space in my brain taken up by jingles for products that were discontinued in 1985 is wasted and if had TiVo back then that same space might have been taken up by something usefull... Maybe I'd be a better speller or have been able to remember my times tables (to this day I cannot do long division on paper)...

I like the challenge of steering around ads. Time-shifting internet radio broadcasts, downloading shows with the commercials edited out (rather than using the 30 sec commercial skip on TiVo), ripping DVDs to strip all the protections off and dump all the stupid previews and ads... So as it stands I can either buy a DVD (which I still do regularly), download it off the internet, download a compressed MPEG-4 version, or any combination of the above (well, accordin the MPAA I shouldn't do the last two). Right now the DVD I download (or rip/reencode, but that is more time consuming) has all the protections removed and I can skip whatever I want. So where is the incentive to pay for a DVD that forces me to sit through previews for movies I might already own? Perhaps if movies studios offered me commercial DVDs with more advanced skipping features (like parental controls or the ability to seamlessly add/remove scenes from the 'directors cut' or just skip the *#!!*$ previews and FBI warnings) I would prefer the commercial discs and stop downloading rips... Then the MPAA could say "see, suing people is working; downloads have decreaased". So the same applies to web ads and TV commercials - I'm going to keep skipping them until they give me a reason not to. Hopefully that reason won't involve a Clockwork Orange-like chair with my eyelids pinned to my forehead, but with the current administration in the White House, you never know :)

This is a really BAAAAAD idea

[Dante333]

When's the last time that Congress passed a good law regarding tech? CAN-SPAM...DMCA...Telcom Deregulation. Every major law congress passes regarding technology seems to make things worse, or do the exact opposite of what we thought it would do. And everyone hurts...THE CONSUMER.

Re:This is a really BAAAAAD idea

[Anonymous Coward]

This is because congress is against the consumer.

Re:This is a really BAAAAAD idea

[Anonymous Coward]

The opposite of progress is congress.

Re:This is a really BAAAAAD idea

[mrchaotica]

What the fuck is a "consumer?" I'm a CUSTOMER, damnit, and any company that wants my business had better realize that! Not to mention the government...

Dupe..

[StikyPad]

This is the same "Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005" that was just-as-in-still-on-the-front-page posted in the story about jail time for sharing pre-publication copyrighted works.

The jail time was tacked onto the bill, and of course nobody's going to vote against parental control over DVDs, right?

Won't somebody think of the children!?!

The same tactic that got the bill through Congress got the story posted under a completely different subject on the front page.

Re:Dupe..

[peachpuff]

To be fair, it does four separate things that all deal with how commercial copyrighted works are treated outside the marketplace. (I made a post pointing out the same thing before I saw yours, but I don't think the packaging of the bill is necessarily sinister.)

Maybe you should submit the other two?

Re:Dupe..

[StikyPad]

...I don't think the packaging of the bill is necessarily sinister.

Well, it's not sinister insomuch as it's par for the course. Inclusion of controversial items in otherwise noncontroversial Bills is commonplace. It's a method of plausible deniability for people who vote one way while simultaneously blaming their opponent for voting the other way on some piece of legislation. E.g., Sen. Alice votes against a tax hike. Unfortunately, the Bill was entitled, "Outlaw Child Slavery," so Alice is obviously in favor of child slavery. See also: porkbelly.

Makes no sense

[shreevatsa]

Wasn't the other news just saying the opposite in its article?

The bill's supporters in Congress won passage of the prison terms by gluing them to an unrelated proposal to legalize technologies that delete offensive content from a film. That proposal was designed to address a lawsuit that Hollywood studios and the Directors Guild of America filed against ClearPlay over a DVD player that filtered violent and nude scenes. (ClearPlay had gained influential allies among family groups such as the Parents Television Council and Focus on the Family.)

says the other one, so filtering is illegal. And this one says it's ok? Am I being stupid, or is it the law?

Re:Makes no sense

[shreevatsa]

Ok, I just guess it was me being stupid. But at least, I noticed it's the same bill.
But can anyone tell me how this bill is related to punishing prerelease filesharers? I'm still too confused.

Re:Makes no sense

[Neil Rubin]

But can anyone tell me how this bill is related to punishing prerelease filesharers?

Strangely enough, a single bill can change the copyright law in more than one way. For what it is worth, this bill also reauthorized funding for the National Film Preservation Foundation and made it legal for libraries to copy films, music, and images during the last 20 years of copyright protection (remember that the term was extended 20 years by the Sonny Bono Act) for archival purposes.

Of course, you could have just clicked on the link to the bill in the article if you wanted to figure this out.

You want a "free-er" DVD player?

[rob_squared]

Get rid of the DMCA so that players can get around the DVD's encryption.

Unskippable Trailers and Ads suck...

[Anonymous Coward]

Raise your hand if you've ever bought or rented DVD with 10+ minutes of unskippable trailers and/or ads at the beginning. It's apparently something they started doing on various new releases, and it pissed me off so much that I stopped renting new releases altogether. I don't bother renting anything made after ~2002 anymore because I got one-too-many that tried to force me to watch a bunch of BS at the beginning (it didn't work -- I took the movies back and traded them in for old releases).

Imagine the pain when you have to watch a movie in two or three sittings (due to time constraints), and every time you start the movie back up you have to sit through the same goddamn 15 minutes of ads...

Anyone want to compose a list of new releases to avoid because of unskippable trailers. Here are the two that my family got burned with:

Stepford Wives (the new one)
Shrek II

Anyone have recommendations for new release rentals that *don't* have unskippable trailers? I kinda want to see Hero and House of Hidden Daggers. Anyone know if they have unskippable trailers?

Re:Unskippable Trailers and Ads suck...

[TealShark]

I think this whole sway toward unskippable ads/promos/trailers at the top of a DVD is the reason I just can't bring myself to replace my old Afreey (rebadged Sampo) DVD player I bought years ago.

Thanks to a firmware hacking project for old Sampo players, I've been able to re-flash it to allow me simply to press Menu or Skip-> to go right from the warning at the top of the Parade of Annoyance to the DVD's main menu.

There really shouldn't be any reason this should not be allowed in all DVD players. Back in the days of VHS, we had a wicked button called FFW to make the bad things go away; last I checked, it didn't kill the video rental business.

Re:Unskippable Trailers and Ads suck...

[HermanAB]

Easy - play it on a Linux box.

Or, as someone else pointed out - I'll try it one day if I remember: Start the DVD, then press Menu, followed by Play. That just sounds too easy.

The way I usually do it: Give the DVD to my son and ask him to call me when the movie starts...

Re:Unskippable Trailers and Ads suck...

[ezthrust]

I kinda want to see Hero and House of Hidden Daggers. Anyone know if they have unskippable trailers?

Go to your local chinatown (if you have one in your city) and pick up either for about five bucks. No trailiers at all then. AND, you haven't given the MPAA any money.

Re:Unskippable Trailers and Ads suck...

[Anonymous Coward]

try this

let us assume for a moment that the high cost of a dvd helps to recover production costs to produce said dvd. this cost also helps to recover the production costs of the ads and trailers placed on the dvd. since you have no desire to watch the ads and trailers, you are paying for content you didn't ask for.

therefore then, it would be within ethical reason to go to blockbuster or your favorite video rental store, rent the movies you want to watch, and copy them to your own dvds sans the ads, trailers and even menus. the movie companies still receive their share of revenue from blockbuster/$fave_video_rental_store and you pay a fair price to see the content you wish to view. and you get to watch that movie again anytime you want.

Re:Unskippable Trailers and Ads suck...

[Quattro Vezina]

Raise your hand if you've ever bought or rented DVD with 10+ minutes of unskippable trailers and/or ads at the beginning.

Yup. This is the sole reason I prefer VCDs nowadays. I can live with the lower quality of VCDs if it means that I can skip over whatever I don't like. In fact, as long as it's watchable, I can't really tell the difference in quality anyway.

Re:Unskippable Trailers and Ads suck...

[adolf]

After being run through DVD Shrink, all such DVD "features" such as non-skippable ads disappear, along with a bunch of other configurable stuff.

It is often a very fun thing to remove EVERYTHING from the movie except for the movie itself.

I mean, imagine this: You insert a DVD into the player, and the movie begins playing. No menus, no boilerplate, no pushing Play, no nothing. And when the movie ends, the player goes back to idle and shuts off by itself after a few minutes.

And the best part: No hideously-loud 30-second repeating audio loop behind the menu to wake you up after a boring film.

Of course, you'll need a DVD burner. But those are cheap.

And you'll need some blank media. That's cheap too.

And I can hear you say: "But I want to do this with rented movies."

And to that, I can only retort that there must be some reason for Blockbuster to be hawking DVD+R blanks right beside the checkout counter, and that this is probably it.

Re:Unskippable Trailers and Ads suck...

[tepples]

Easy - play it on a Linux box.

Who can afford the time and money to set up a dedicated set-top Linux box with a TV output and a DVD player that's illegal in Slashdot's home country?

Re:Unskippable Trailers and Ads suck...

[geekboy642]

Ahh, just like LaserDiscs! God, I loved those things.

Re:Unskippable Trailers and Ads suck...

[Technician]

The way I usually do it: Give the DVD to my son and ask him to call me when the movie starts...

I push play when I get home and then enjoy dinner with the TV off. After dinner, I turn on the TV and then hit menu. It's ready to run with no waiting. It reminds me of the days of running a movie theatre. Before the show starts, the projector needed threaded and queued up to the start frame on the leader and the lamp struck to come up to temprature. Playing a DVD now is not any different except queuing the player takes about 15 minutes lead time instead of 5 for the projector.

Re:Unskippable Trailers and Ads suck...

[tobias.sargeant]

How about you start the DVD playing, turn off the TV, go make a coffee?

Why does everything have to be *now*?

Re:Unskippable Trailers and Ads suck...

[big tex]

After being run through DVD Shrink,

This looks like a great piece of software, but ...
Is there something equivalent for the mac?
Anyone?

Re:Unskippable Trailers and Ads suck...

[Anonymous Coward]

How about you start the DVD playing, turn off the TV, go make a coffee? Why does everything have to be *now*?

You know, I think what pisses me off the most is just the idea that the people I'm *paying* are treating me this way: Why in hell should the DVD player that I paid $XX for and the movie that cost me $Y to rent be conspiring against me and not letting me watch the goddamn movie when I want to.

Also, time is not a luxury for me. Sometimes I'll only have 45 minutes to an hour to kick back and let my mind unwind with a movie, and wasting 15 of those minutes on a Ben Stiller ad is just insulting (see Shrek II for this...). Especially when I just saw the ad fucking *yesterday* when I watched the first 45 minutes of the movie.

Maybe you have oodles of free time. Maybe you never have problems watching an entire movie in one sitting. Maybe you can always manage to keep in the back of your mind "Ok, I'm going to be watching a movie tonight at 9pm -- don't forget to go in and start it at 8:30"... That's great, but that's not me. And I'm insulted that the technology overlords have teamed up against me to prevent me from watching the movies I paid for at the times I choose to watch them.

Re:Unskippable Trailers and Ads suck...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, to be back in HK, Philly, or LA... But I'm out in the boonies now -- no chinatown in sight.

Re:Unskippable Trailers and Ads suck...

[evilviper]

Who can afford the time and money to set up a dedicated set-top Linux box with a TV output and a DVD player

Considering how much time you waste watching forced ads, who can afford NOT to spend a little time up-front and save a lot of time in the long run?

The money is minimal. You can use any old PC, as low as, say 400MHz and still get perfectly good performance for DVD playback, without having to spend time tweaking the compiler flags to squeeze every last cycle out of your processor. A TNT2 card with TV-out was only $20 about 2 years ago, last I looked.

that's illegal in Slashdot's home country?

The legality of using libdvdcss is questionable. Saying it's outright illegal is very ignorant.

Re:Unskippable Trailers and Ads suck...

[menace3society]

I kinda want to see Hero and House of Hidden Daggers. Anyone know if they have unskippable trailers?

I don't know, but skip them anyway. The only way to justify spending any money on them whatsoever is to see them in a big-screen theater. If you want to get the same esthic effect, watch Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon over and over again until you get sick of it. That's the first scene of one movie.

Re:Unskippable Trailers and Ads suck...

[tobias.sargeant]

I wasn't trying to imply that it's not wrong that you can't skip advertisments; merely that there are constructive (and not necessarily technological) ways to ignore the problem. It wasn't my intention, by the way, to criticize. I don't pretend to have an answer to my question, but do I recognise it as an endemic problem in today's society.

And, no, between two young children, a PhD and a job, I don't have much spare time. As a result, I've dramatically reduced the number of movies I watch.

Re:Unskippable Trailers and Ads suck...

[Ian Peon]

Most of the time, the movie is on "title" 1. My cheepy Panasonic DVD player allows me to jump to any title at any time. So, pop in the DVD, see the begining of the FBI warning, jump to title 1, see the movie.

AFAIK, the restrictions on skipping only apply to chapters. I'm not sure there is a command in the DVD set to restrict changing the track.

Re:Unskippable Trailers and Ads suck...

[m50d]

Watch them on a computer with DeCSS, if you can.

Re:Unskippable Trailers and Ads suck...

[Anonymous Coward]

They are skippable, however you can't hit the menu button to do it. You need to hit the next button to skip each ad till you get to the main menu. It usually takes anywhere from four to eight presses of the next button.
Or do what I do, which is rip the DVD and remove all the crap.

Re:Unskippable Trailers and Ads suck...

[Gulthek]

Of course there is. Popcorn.

For excellent DVD ripping use MacTheRipper.

For excellent ripping to divx, HandBrake.

It's a freakin' Mac, multimedia editing is its home territory.

Re:Unskippable Trailers and Ads suck...

[tepples]

Considering how much time you waste watching forced ads, who can afford NOT to spend a little time up-front and save a lot of time in the long run?

In practice, forced ads means you start the DVD player, leave the TV turned off for 10 minutes, and go off to do something else useful. Setting up a Linux box, on the other hand, takes up your foreground concentration and can take hours of research.

The money is minimal.

But it's still a lot more than the money for a $40 set-top DVD player from Wal-Mart. Divide that by $4 per hour (USA minimum wage after taxes) to see how long you have to work to afford it.

You can use any old PC, as low as, say 400MHz

And avoid fan noise how? Quiet cooling takes time and money.

The legality of using libdvdcss is questionable. Saying it's outright illegal is very ignorant.

Ignorant? I see it as settled precedent, which is binding in one federal circuit and still strong in others. See Universal v. Reimerdes. Why, specifically, does this not apply?

Re:Unskippable Trailers and Ads suck...

[evilviper]

And avoid fan noise how? Quiet cooling takes time and money.

Bullshit. I've got several computers that run quieter than most DVD players. You know what it cost? $3 each, for nearly silent, thermally-controlled Enermax fans... My previous journal entry is even about that. Quiet cooling takes very little time and money.

I see it as settled precedent, which is binding in one federal circuit and still strong in others. See Universal v. Reimerdes. Why, specifically, does this not apply?

First off, the code in question at that trial is DeCSS, which has no link to libdvdcss at all.

But the primary reason is that the case in question deals with the public distribution of DeCSS, not the private home USE of the code. Watching DVDs with libdvdcss does not require you to setup a webpage and re-distribute the code, and/or link to sources.

Re:Unskippable Trailers and Ads suck...

[tepples]

First off, the code in question at that trial is DeCSS, which has no link to libdvdcss at all.

With precedent on the books in at least one federal circuit, what makes you think a court will find a functional difference between the two programs?

But the primary reason is that the case in question deals with the public distribution of DeCSS, not the private home USE of the code.

If it's illegal to distribute the code, then it takes even longer for a private home user to rewrite the code himself! Time is money.

Re:Unskippable Trailers and Ads suck...

[evilviper]

what makes you think a court will find a functional difference between the two programs?

DeCSS was a Windows program, which was created through illegally (at least in the US) reverse-engineering a closed-source program. libdvdcss, however, was clean-room reverse engineered, and it's a Unix program.

Besides the issue of how it was created, there's also the issue of non-infringing uses. Since there were functional software DVD players for Windows, a Windows program to descrypt DVDs appears to be less of a legitimate program. Whereas a native Unix program, released years before any player became available, has a very strong basis for arguing that it was designed with legal purposes in-mind.

If it's illegal to distribute the code, then it takes even longer for a private home user to rewrite the code himself! Time is money.

You just don't want to listen do you?

It may be (or may not be) illegal for you to redistribute the code, so don't do it and you're free and clear. It is, however, completely legal for people in many countries outside of the USA to distribute the code. With the internet removing borders, that means downloading a copy of libdvdcss from a friendly country is just as easy as downloading it from a site within the USA.

It's an incredibly stupid argument you're making, because OpenSSH is in the same situation. It would be illegal to re-distribute it to countries outside of the USA from within the USA, however, being based in Canada, it's perfectly legal to distribute it, perfectly legal for you to download and use it, etc.

Re:Unskippable Trailers and Ads suck...

[big tex]

Just tried that. Well, MacTheRipper and the Finder's burner software.

Worked perfect - Rip to the desktop, put a blank DVD-R in, drag the file from the desktop to the DVD in the finder, hit burn. Runs on my DVD player no problem.

It is a sad day....

[EmbeddedJanitor]

... that the state in a "free country" is debating what order you may watch video material and whether or not you may skip watching stuff.

Re:It is a sad day....

[HermanAB]

Gawd forbid that someone would want to play a DVD backwards to look for satanic images and noises...
The US would likely need a total rewrite of the DMCA to allow that.

Re:It is a sad day....

[geminidomino]

Not to mention a total rewrite of Mplayer. ;)

Re:It is a sad day....

[michaelhood]

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate. -- Noam Chomsky

Re:It is a sad day....

[X.25]

... that the state in a "free country" is debating what order you may watch video material and whether or not you may skip watching stuff.

What free country?

Re:It is a sad day....

[EmbeddedJanitor]

What free country?

Download for free from www.cuntry.com

Re:It is a sad day....

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Sadly very true. I don't travel to the USA much, but when I do I notice a lot of choice about things that don't really matter to me (three kinds of bun for my hamburger) and little choice in the things that do.

Nice Feature.

[guibaby]

I have a GO-VIDEO DVD-VCR combo. The main reason I bought it was because it has a feature called AUTOPLAY(R). I put the DVD in and the movie immediately starts playing. No previews. No federal warning. No Menu.

Re:Nice Feature.

[HermanAB]

You are going to burn in hell my son...

My VCR was able to FF and skip crap, what makes a DVD any different? Why do USAsians need a special law to 'allow' for a spinning silver disc, that which is perfectly OK for a brown tape, or a 16mm home movie (anyone remember those?).

Re:Nice Feature.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do USAsians need a special law to 'allow' for a spinning silver disc

All US Asians I know buy pirate videos from Hong Kong that don't have previews. Some even duplicate the theater experence by having the heads of people just below the wide screen horizon including a silhouette of a few going to the bathroom. I applaud their efforts to making something useful of that empty space on 4:3 televisions.

Why was it needed?

[Rufus88]

aimed at allowing your DVD to skip past nude scenes and the like.

Before the bill, what exactly was prohibiting DVD players from doing this?

Re:Why was it needed?

[MC68000]

Nothing. It is referring to a company called ClearPlay that resold DVDs at a substancial markup after having scrubbed them of non-family-friendly content. The bill just passed makes this practice legal, which is necessary because Hollywood groups are suing ClearPlay.

Re:Why was it needed?

[mr100percent]

Nothing was prohibiting the players, but Clearplay the company had wrote a program to skip over non-family friendly scenes. The movie industry was aghast, saying it was against the director's wishes, the vision of the film, and a violation of copyright. This new law allows them to legally strip videos without breaking copyright.

Re:Why was it needed?

[NotoriousQ]

Probably the DVDCSS license/contract. I will take a guess that since congress did not specifically get paid to enforce the contract, they are now waking up to pressure from various groups that they have no financial reason to resist. Hence parts of the contract will become void by law.

Meanwhile, my illegal dvd linux box skips anything I want just fine. However, each time I watch a movie, I am adding a maximum of 20 years to my prison sentence.

Re:Why was it needed?

[RedWizzard]

Copyright law. The MPAA and studios sued ClearPlay for breach of copyright.

Re:Why was it needed?

[Rufus88]

Probably the DVDCSS license/contract

Well, if that's what it is, then the bill doesn't do anything. Just because the government says I can do something, it doesn't keep me from engaging in an agreement with someone in which I agree not to do that something.

Re:Why was it needed?

[Rufus88]

This new law allows them to legally strip videos without breaking copyright.

But in what way were they breaking copyright in the first place? It sounds to me like the accusation was groundless. The clearplay player and filter was not creating duplicates of the discs. Did they merely pass a law to clarify an existing law? I can see why it would piss off the MPAA and directors, but is there any way in which a claim of copyright infringement can be reasonably substantiated?

Re:Why was it needed?

[Anonymous Coward]

durrrrrrr

Law supercedes contract ALWAYS.

If the government says you cannot forbid people from skipping something, then no contract in the world can force you to build a dvd player that obeys the Prohibited User Operation flags to prevent users from skipping something.

Re:Why was it needed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and if I got on the jury I'd vote against the lawsuit. The suit has no merit. There is no copyright issue here. Nothing is being copied. The original DVD media remains pristine and unchanged. In fact, ClearPlay doesn't even have to sell or rent you a DVD. You can use your own DVDs or ones you rent from places like BlockBuster.

What they are selling you is a player and an edit list. Or rather, a service that provides you edit lists. You give the player the edit list for the movie you want to watch and it mutes the volume, skips frames, or blacks out portions of the screen according to the severity you want enforced.

This is the equivelant of hiring someone (who knows the movie very well) to stand next to your TV and mute the volume or hold up a black card in front of the screen during objectionable material.

There is no copyright issue involved. Stephen King cannot sue you for copyright infrigement if you skip pages, paragraphs, or chapters in his book you just bought. You are allowed to read the book anyway you want, even last chapter first.

And if some lame judge or jury rules otherwise, I want all those TV broadcasters and cable channels to be sued for squeezing the closing credits off to one side of my TV screen when they show a movie on the tube!

Now there are other companies, like Clean Flicks of Colorado, who actually edit the movie and rent you the edited copy. If I were on that jury, I'd vote for the MPAA. In my opinion, Clean Flicks is violating the copyright. They made a copy. They didn't have the right. What could be plainer? And they're doing it to make money, which should increase the penalty.

Re:Why was it needed?

[jolande]

IANAL, but...

Of course not. What clearplay does is akin to me putting stick-it notes inside of one of your books so that you could skip through the boring chapters and get to the good stuff. This is obviously not illegal.

Re:Why was it needed?

[Zoxed]

> Before the bill, what exactly was prohibiting DVD players from doing this?

- Sex and violence in the middle of a film: yes, you can press fast forward, but the kids still get the gist of it: I guess the controllers want a clean jump past some material.

- Adverts/warnings etc at the start (my pet hate): AFAIK it is in the DVD standards: material on the disk can be maked as unskippable.

Re:Why was it needed?

[canavan]

Nothing was prohibiting the players

No law was stopping players to ignore User Operation Prohibitions, but the DVDCA's licensing. You can't build a licensed DVD player that allows the user to skip over 'unskippable' content, turn off 'mandatory' subtitles or other annoyances, much in the same way region coding or macrovision copy protection on the analog signals for css encoded discs are required.

Re:Why was it needed?

[91degrees]

What they were doing was possibly infringing on copyright. Unlikely, but it would have been expensive for Clearplay to defend.

This law explicitely permits this.

Re:Why was it needed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually they sell a DVD Player which is capable of downloading and installing a content list of sorts. For $4.95 a month the list is updated and DVD's released and played on the device abide by the restrictions placed in the content list for that movie. The DVD itself is not altered in any way and if played in their devices would bleep out swear words and if played in any other device would not bleep them out.

Re:Why was it needed?

[Rufus88]

Either you're in the running for the Nonsequitur of the Year award, or you didn't read my question carefully. (Hint: My question was NOT "Why do people and/or player manufacturers want this capability.")

Re:Why was it needed?

[Zoxed]

> or you didn't read my question carefully

I did read your question carefully: however it is possible that my reply is not very clear !!

My reply was intended to answer a technical question about *skipping* past the nude scenes before the bill: there is nothing prohibiting you at the moment either skipping complete chapters, or from fast-forwarding through scenes, but I guess that after the bill a parent could buy a new player and press a "skip sex and violence" button and that would be it: the player would seamlessly *skip* past those scenes on all coded DVDs, as opposed to *fast-forwarding*. And the parent would not need to be present.

If this came out

[Anonymous Coward]

DVD's by Universal Pictures might actually be worth buying. (Forced Ads).

And it goes without saying that most OSS DVD players like VLC can just skip between titles.

Geez

[ScrewMaster]

You know, it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly.

Re:Geez

[RedWizzard]

You know, it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly.

This doesn't make DVD players work in any way at all. All it does is to protect the likes of ClearPlay legally.

Re:Geez

[Anonymous Coward]

So in other words I can create "SkipPlay" which skips all the trailers and crap for me, and it would be fully legal?

Re:Geez

[Anonymous Coward]

It took a god damn act of congress to KEEP us from dvd players that worked properly in the first place.

If it wasn't for bullshit like the DMCA the market would have long since provide us with features we wanted.

Re:Geez

[RedWizzard]

So in other words I can create "SkipPlay" which skips all the trailers and crap for me, and it would be fully legal?

My understanding (and I haven't read the bill) is that it makes it legal to skip pieces of a copyrighted work, i.e. produce a re-edited version on the fly. Currently this is (arguably) illegal under copyright law, because it's effectively producing a derivative work without the copyright owner's permission. But that's not what is protecting the trailers and anti-piracy messages. They're unskippable because that capability is in the DVD spec, and presumably enforced by the contracts between the DVD patent and trademark holders and the DVD player manufacturers. AFAIK, this new law won't have any effect on that contract clause.

So the short answer to your question is: no. But it will legalize the production of alternate edits of movies (like "The Phantom Edit" version of The Phantom Menace), if they're done in the same way that ClearPlay uses: an edit or cut list distributed separately from the movie.

Because.

[Lapsed Catholic]

The Directors Guild of America sued ClearPlay in federal court in Colorado alleging copyright violations. Basically the argument was that ClearPlay was creating a derivative work (actually 2^N - 1 derivative works) by placing markers throughout a movie denoting skippable scenes containing sex or violence. This provision was introduced by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) to specifically exempt such marking from being considered a derivative work for purposes of copyright law.

I'd like to think this is an instance of enlightenment in regard to our ridiculous copyright law, but I think it's just a coincidence that this is a reasonable provision. I wouldn't hold my breath expecting something like this for commercials. The culture war- specifically hatred of Hollywood- probably had more to do with this law. Color me cynical, but I suspect it may be a gift to ClearPlay as well, who will be especially well positioned after this. Once the bill is signed into law, the suit against them will be dismissed.

Re:Because.

[Anonymous Coward]

Once the bill is signed into law, the suit against them will be dismissed.

OMG! Won't somebody think of the lawyers?? Every time you dismiss a lawsuit, a lawyer cries.

Re:Because.

[Lapsed Catholic]

>Once the bill is signed into law, the suit against them will be dismissed.

OMG! Won't somebody think of the lawyers?? Every time you dismiss a lawsuit, a lawyer cries.

It's the arbitrariness that bugs me. I may be wrong, but I don't recall PVR manufacturers getting a similar legislative exemption from their legal problems concerning commercial skipping, and IANAL but it's not clear to me that this provision intended for sex and violence can be extended to commercials:

SEC. 202. EXEMPTION FROM INFRINGEMENT FOR SKIPPING AUDIO AND VIDEO CONTENT IN MOTION PICTURES.
(a) In General- Section 110 of title 17, United States Code, is amended--
(1) in paragraph (9), by striking `and' after the semicolon at the end;
(2) in paragraph (10), by striking the period at the end and inserting `; and';
(3) by inserting after paragraph (10) the following:
`(11) the making imperceptible, by or at the direction of a member of a private household, of limited portions of audio or video content of a motion picture, during a performance in or transmitted to that household for private home viewing, from an authorized copy of the motion picture, or the creation or provision of a computer program or other technology that enables such making imperceptible and that is designed and marketed to be used, at the direction of a member of a private household, for such making imperceptible, if no fixed copy of the altered version of the motion picture is created by such computer program or other technology.'; and
(4) by adding at the end the following:
`For purposes of paragraph (11), the term `making imperceptible' does not include the addition of audio or video content that is performed or displayed over or in place of existing content in a motion picture.
`Nothing in paragraph (11) shall be construed to imply further rights under section 106 of this title, or to have any effect on defenses or limitations on rights granted under any other section of this title or under any other paragraph of this section.'.
(b) Exemption From Trademark Infringement- Section 32 of the Trademark Act of 1946 (15 U.S.C. 1114) is amended by adding at the end the following:
`(3)(A) Any person who engages in the conduct described in paragraph (11) of section 110 of title 17, United States Code, and who complies with the requirements set forth in that paragraph is not liable on account of such conduct for a violation of any right under this Act. This subparagraph does not preclude liability, nor shall it be construed to restrict the defenses or limitations on rights granted under this Act, of a person for conduct not described in paragraph (11) of section 110 of title 17, United States Code, even if that person also engages in conduct described in paragraph (11) of section 110 of such title.
`(B) A manufacturer, licensee, or licensor of technology that enables the making of limited portions of audio or video content of a motion picture imperceptible as described in subparagraph (A) is not liable on account of such manufacture or license for a violation of any right under this Act, if such manufacturer, licensee, or licensor ensures that the technology provides a clear and conspicuous notice at the beginning of each performance that the performance of the motion picture is altered from the performance intended by the director or copyright holder of the motion picture. The limitations on liability in subparagraph (A) and this subparagraph shall not apply to a manufacturer, licensee, or licensor of technology that fails to comply with this paragraph.
`(C) The requirement under subparagraph (B) to provide notice shall apply only with respect to technology manufactured after the end of the 180-day period beginning on the date of the enactment of the Family Movie Ac

Re:Because.

[LoverOfJoy]

" Color me cynical, but I suspect it may be a gift to ClearPlay as well, who will be especially well positioned after this. Once the bill is signed into law, the suit against them will be dismissed."

Well, if the studios were smart, they'd learn that if ya can't beat em, join em. At that point, new DVDs would be able to skip past adult scenes without any help from outside companies and ClearPlay would end up the loser.

Re:Because.

[Lapsed Catholic]

I'd like a DVD player that only plays the adult scenes. In a loop, so my right hand is freed from having to use the remote.

Re:Because.

[Anonymous Coward]

ClearPlay in federal court in Colorado

Are you confusing Clean Flicks of Colorado with ClearPlay, a Utah-based company?

Clean Flicks was making copies that were edited and renting the copies. ClearPlay provides you an edit list to assist you in how you watch the movie. They do not mark the movie. They don't copy or alter the DVD in any way.

Re:Because.

[Lapsed Catholic]

Are you confusing Clean Flicks of Colorado with ClearPlay, a Utah-based company?

Clean Flicks was making copies that were edited and renting the copies. ClearPlay provides you an edit list to assist you in how you watch the movie. They do not mark the movie. They don't copy or alter the DVD in any way.

That depends on how you define "copy or alter the DVD". ClearPlay doesn't actually sell edited DVDs but they sell filters for hundreds of DVDs. These basically amount to a list of cut points, with a duration, category, and rating for each, intended to be used in a DVD player capable of recognizing the DVD and enforcing the cut policy you determine. Whether this counts as "marking" the movie or not is open to interpretation, since the movie itself is really just a series of bits. At no point does ClearPlay's system actually produce a censored binary, except as a signal leaving the DVD player. One might argue that this counts as copying, since it has to copy or alter the information on the DVD to apply the filter. But any player has to copy the bits off the disc into memory to play it in the first place. This gets into the sort of legal sophistry that was at the heart of the deCSS case.

If you look at the actual text of the bill you'll see it contains language that says the exemption only applies if no fixed copy of the altered version of the motion picture is created by such computer program or other technology. Clean Flicks was selling physical DVDs with censored movies on them, so they obviously won't benefit from this provision. That's a no brainer.

Re:Because.

[mr100percent]

Interesting! One exception they forgot to add into the bill, some TV censors cover over the mouth when they remove the audio cursing, this bill specifically forbids any video or audio introduced over the original. So they can remove the offending clip, but they can't black out any of the video or add anything in place, like a non-curse word (like some TV stations do when they replace a cuss word with a non-cuss word).

Re:Because.

[Deliveranc3]

Advertising is embattled in a ceaseless war to keep ads at a low price, you can produce a television show with just advertising revenue but not a movie.

The problem is that opportunities for near free advertising and it's subsequent universality and annoyance nescessitate further marketting by volume to compete.

Observe, in the old days people READ and concentrated on Ads... they would look at a car ad. Get a good idea about features and price and an insight into the companies philosophy expressed through advertising.

Now advertisers compete for mindshare (The ugliest form is called brand recognition)... very little objective testing on the boxes to demonstre superiority. Just a big logo and an allusion to idealistic visions, christian values like love, harmony, wealth, image. etc) it's ugly and it functions by total spamming users.

Even boxes are designed to show the corperate brand not describe the contents.

Re:Because.

[Pofy]

Seems to handle motion pictures only?? So will we now have to wait for a new law doing the same to music CDs? WHen will we have a law that makes it "legal" to skip adds and uninteresting articles in a newspaper?

Re:Because.

[Anonymous Coward]

If this former copyright infringement is suddenly legal, What will prevent Joe average Cracker from placing a few markers in DVD's and placing the full thing up for download?

Re:Because.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the arbitrariness that bugs me.

It's the fact that this is happening at all that bugs me. The details mean nothing to me. The whole thing is insane.

Because it takes a village?

[NoseBag]

eom.

Government, existing workaroud, possible limits?

[Xeroc]

First, I agree that more government intervention in this matter, rather than market alone, isn't helpful, at least in my opinion.

Secondly, There is already a way around this, you simply let the ads/previews start, then press stop, then "DVD Menu" and hit play. The movie starts without any previews or ads! :)

Lastly, will this technology allow us to skip the messages such as "Copying this movie is prohibited by law" and so forth. If it did, it seems like that would be one government agency affecting another!

what is wrong with parents???

[Doppler00]

I don't understand why parents would want to use ClearPlay. I mean, you either watch the movie or if you find it objectionable, don't. If you used ClearPlay, you're still paying Holywood money to continue what they are doing by just censoring it yourself. I myself just won't bother to see a movie if I think I'm going to be offended. What's the point in seeing a movie you find objectionable if you're going to complain about it being objectionable?

Also, what if someone makes a movie to make a certain political statement, and ClearPlay skews that by censoring parts that were essential to the statement. This would be a misrepresentation of the original work. At the very least, some type of warning might be shown alerting the viewer that by applying this filter, it is no longer representative of the artist's original intent.

Then again, you could imagine quite a few awkward conversations talking about movies you saw through ClearPlay that your friends didn't...

Re:what is wrong with parents???

[enosys]

It's possible for someone to like a movie but not want to watch certain parts, for example due to not being able to stand blood and gore very well. Also it's possible that someone likes the whole movie but wants to watch it with their kids and doesn't want to expose them to certain parts, like maybe sex. I'm not endorsing this. I'm just saying that I'm sure that some people want to do these sorts of things.

Re:what is wrong with parents???

[cherokee158]

I can see how skipping some content would be nice. My wife is a teacher, and sometimes shows relevant films to her classes...but must pre-screen and re-record many of them to omit content that may be inappropriate. (That is, content that will have some parent screaming bloody murder...there is always at least one, even after signing the waivers.)

It's tough to find a movie that doesn't go over the top at some point nowadays...studios seem to prefer PG-13 and R ratings today, instead of the G ratings of yesteryear.

All good fun, but good luck trying to screen this stuff from your six year old. It is no longer even possible to watch TV during prime-time without jumping in front of the screen every five minutes.
The only safe channel is PBS (or, ironically, C-SPAN...nothing going on there).

Re:what is wrong with parents???

[Politburo]

I mean, you either watch the movie or if you find it objectionable, don't.

What is the saying.. some people want to have their cake and eat it, too?

The answer is...

[spagetti_code]

MythTV.

I can jump straight to the menu when a DVD starts.

Combine that with automatic ad-skipping of TV programs (good but not quite perfect), and the magic fwd-30, back-5 buttons on the remote, my tv and video experience is very satisfying. Signal to noise ratio is approaching infinity :-)

Thank the gov't in the first place

[klipsch_gmx]

"Look at some DVDs. You already can't skip some commercials on those"

Actually when the studios first started putting trailers and stuff before the movies on dvd's they fixed it so you couldn't get around them. Especially the warning pages. But every new dvd I've rented over the past few months has allowed me to hit chapter forward to skip past them. Even the FBI warnings. It shows up but chapter forward decreases the time you have to sit there watching. You still can't just hit menu sometimes to jump past the trailers but you can skip them. Obviously not ideal but better than it used to be.

Hopefully this new law will alleviate some of the problems in this area.

We can sell supercomputers to China...

[iminplaya]

Family Movie Act of 2005 - Exempts from copyright and trademark infringement, under certain circumstances: (1) making limited portions of the audio or video content of a motion picture for private home viewing imperceptible; or (2) the creation of technology that enables such editing. emphasis mine

But this technology is so dangerous that it had to be banned from public possession??!! Hoarders and speculators unite! We must not allow this! What a sick bunch.

I have my own "freedom" with my DVD player

[Ty]

I move around a lot, carrying my DVD collection in a big binder case. Unfortunately they do scratch, so I started backing them up when burners first came out. One of the benefits: removing prohibited user actions from the copy as some programs, like DVD-decryptor, allow. It's my own little way of giving the studios the middle finger I guess.

This SPECIFICALLY has to do with ClearPlay...

[barfy]

And has NOTHING to do with not being able to skip through the ads.

ClearPlay has nothing to with DVD Consortium edicts, and has to do with the wishes of the creators of the copywritten material.

The no skip feature of the pre-menu stuff is a feature that makes a DVD player a DVD player. You cannot implement without it and have license from the DVD Consortium.

These are two entirely different things, and the law only deals with one of them.

Re:This SPECIFICALLY has to do with ClearPlay...

[dascandy]

Then I suppose I'll just keep playing all my DVD's with my NOT-A-DVD-PLAYER-MPlayer that's 100% free and available for everybody at www.mplayerhq.hu. Note, it also runs in windows and just allows you to pick which movie track to play, so just ignore the ad sections or skip over them.

Re:Government, existing workaroud, possible limits

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of them won't let you hit STOP or SKIP or any other buttons until their advertising and funky animated logos are finished.

Which comes to a worse point:
When you buy a movie for the kids and they are screaming the house down. You think "Hey! I'll stick the movie on to calm them down" and then they sit through 15 minutes of ads and funky logos about cows until the show comes on.
DVDs for children should have:
1. No advertising
2. No funky animated logos
3. Auto-"Play All" when it's inserted.
4. Auto-repeat enabled by default.

...and...

[tmleafsar]

...just passed a bill allowing DVD players to skip through programming.

I could do this before. It was called "fast forward"

Re:...and...

[nytmare]

You're a DVD player?

The Killer App

[drxray]

I can't believe you haven't spotted this yet:

*It could edit Jar Jar out of Star Wars*

Maybe version 2 will change walkie-talkies to guns...

Re:The Killer App

[bert1605]

And edit out Greedo shooting first!

Here's Hoping

[ColaMan]

Non-skippable playback is one of the most annoying "features" of DVD.
It's like the marketing-droids went, "Hey! this *random access* optical disk, lets deliberately cripple it! And,and ... we'll make it so that there's no way to tell if you've sat through it before, so we'll make you sit through it every time!! Yeah!!"

Fuckers, fuckers, fuckers.

Anyway, see my previous post on my personal solution to the matter.

Day late and a dollar short!

[pair-a-noyd]

I recently bought a DVD that had what seemed like 10 minutes of trailers on it BEFORE the movie.
I was very unhappy because I took great offense to some of the subject matter of the trailers.
It was offensive, annoying and forced upon me.
I was unable to skip the previews.

So, guess what I did? Yep...
I ripped the disc, stripped the BS out, including all the evil warnings and useless trailers and reburned it to a new DVD..

Now I have the movie the way *I* want to see it.
What's next, are they going to arrest people for showing up late, skipping the preview/trailers in the theater now?

Re:Day late and a dollar short!

[Creepy Crawler]

Then you ought to return it for a "defective" disc.

DEMAND your money back, and when they say you could have copied it, say its "against the law".

Course, this is when you call your CC company and chargeback the unwilling company ( you DID use a CC, right?).

Re:Day late and a dollar short!

[Anonymous Coward]

"What's next, are they going to arrest people for showing up late, skipping the preview/trailers in the theater now?"

No. They just put any theatre that allowes anyone entrance after the "bell" (or allow them to reside on a place where they are not forced to see the screen) on a blacklist. That way they themselves get everything they want, while letting those theatres taking the brunt.

Same Bill as Last YRO Story

[peachpuff]

link from the article.

It may help you to know . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect Orrin Hatch would support this bill, but I don't think he'll go for less copy protection. Does anyone know if he voted on this bill and how?

Clear Play, the special interest to which this legislation is directed, is headquartered in Utah and a Hatch constituent. Senator Hatch sponsored the early incarnations of this bill on the Senate side, and can be counted on as a solid "yes."

Won't work that way

[John Seminal]

I can understand the FBI warning, but I don't pay $20 for a DVD to watch ads for movies that are crappy/have no interest in

I don't think this law is going to help you much

The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005 (HR357) also would permit technologies that allow users to skip objectionable content in movies viewed at home.

I believe this act will be used by studios to make PG versions of their R rated movies. It will take out nudity and explicit language. They will do to movies what happened to music in the 90's. You will have a PG Eazy-E and an explicit one. I just wonder how many people will accidently buy the PG version, open it, realise what they did, try and take it back and be told they are stuck with the bad purchase.

I HATE the previews on DVD's that can not be skipped over. I preffer previews to be on a DVD in a "bonus" section. If the preview is forced on me, I get very frustrated, I have zero interest in what I am watching. If the preview is a bonus, then when I finish the movie, if I want to, I'll look at the trailers to see what else is out there. I find that a pleasurable experiance.

The worst offenders are Universal, that has a montage of thier past movies that can't be skipped over. I don't want to see 5 seconds of Jurastic park followed by 5 seconds of Nutty Professor, and so on, and so on, and so on. I hate that!

But since when do entertainment studios care what customers think. I believe it will get MUCH, MUCH worse. I believe the studio's will add commercials to DVD's that can't be skipped, just like the commericals in movie theaters. If Ford offers a dime for evey DVD with their Pick-up Truck commercial, and a studio expects to sell 30 million DVD's, that is $3,000,000 the studio makes for that one commercial. How do we combat profit?

I hate to say it, but I feel like people will start buying DVD players from Hong Kong that are region free (and can be set to a region too), and movies from websites located outside of the USA. There will be a market.

I'll give one more example of how the USA is going to force people to buy elsewhere. I purchased a $2000 laptop with a DVD drive. I am studying a foriegn language, and purchased movies from amazon.fr to help learn listening to the language. If I set my DVD drive to region 2 to watch a French movie, then later back to region 1 to watch an USA movie, one I do that 5 times my DVD locks so I can't change the region on it. WHY? The movies I am buying from France are not even available in the USA.

Re:Won't work that way

[InvalidError]

How do we combat profit?

Boycott?

If enough people start putting off the 'inconvenience' of not buying crippled DVDs and not watching them, studios will have to review their business practices or sink.

Then again, they would almost certainly blame download first, long and hard before realizing the true thruth that they are facing a boycott. This would hurt their bottom line much worse than "sales lost to piracy" ever have.... most real evidence so far actually says downloads promote sales - at least for the better stuff.

Re:Won't work that way

[NanoGator]

"Then again, they would almost certainly blame download first, long and hard before realizing the true thruth that they are facing a boycott. "

Though I appreciate the spirit of your post, I think your comment right here pretty much puts the last nail into the coffin, so to speak. The studios would likely respond by crippling DVDs even more to stop those EVIL COMMUNIST DOWNLOADS. Heh. Now, if a bunch of people bought a DVD and returned it the next day unopened, the message would come across. "Here's a million dollars you could have had if you didn't piss us off."

Re:Won't work that way

[kenthorvath]

The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005 (HR357) also would permit technologies that allow users to skip objectionable content in movies viewed at home.

I find the previews and commercials to be objectionable, actually. I usually put the disc in and leave the TV off for the first 10 mins or so while I make popcorn or some other food. By the time I get back to sit down, the menu is up.

Yes, I am that stubborn. No, really.

Re:Won't work that way

[Naosuke]

The Bill is still in the Senate ( S.167 ) So we should all write to our Senators and let them know that we support this bill and would like to see wording added so that previews are listed as being explicitly skippable. Also if you donated money to their campaign be sure to mention that.

Re:Won't work that way

[toren]

I am studying a foriegn language, and purchased movies from amazon.fr to help learn listening to the language. If I set my DVD drive to region 2 to watch a French movie, then later back to region 1 to watch an USA movie, one I do that 5 times my DVD locks so I can't change the region on it. WHY? The movies I am buying from France are not even available in the USA.

Not that it's a solution to the underlying problem, but you should check out amazon.ca for French movies. They have a sizeable selection of French-only stuff, and Canadian DVDs are region-1, just like the US. They're also NTSC, so your TV and DVD player should handle them too.

Re:Won't work that way

[timothv]

You can use AnyDVD to install drivers for Windows to ignore the region code and remove any protection on the DVD.

Re:Won't work that way

[Anonymous Coward]

> I usually put the disc in and leave the TV off for the first 10 mins or so while I make popcorn or some other food.

Cool. So you avoid the ads, but you get fat.

<troll mode="flamebait">
How american...
</troll>

Re:Won't work that way

[mockenh]

I HATE the previews on DVD's that can not be skipped over.

I second that. A workaround that works for me is to abort the autostart and fire up chapter 1 directly. Usually the main movie is there and plays right away.

Re:Won't work that way

[FidelCatsro]

On an intresting side note to this subject .I know using cracked Firmware is quite likely legal now anyway(thought distributing may not be) .I was thinking if distribution of cracked firmwares to allow region free would be 100% acceptable as i do belive the "Region coding is to stop piracy " argument they use is total crap .
Region coding is to stop free trade always has been , and there is no law stoping us distributing programs to remove a non state enforced trade barrier.I would dearly love to have this one argued in court ,on those grounds. lets have the region encoding forcfully removed by law not the hard work of hackers.

Re:Won't work that way

[Redwin]

As they said, AnyDVD does that aswell, allows full control of a DVD (any region) and even has a label saying "Skip annoying trailers and messages on start" :-)

Re:Won't work that way

[InvalidError]

An unopened copy simply goes back on the shelves until someone else picks it up. Buying and returning unopened wastes everyone's time and otherwise has the same net effect as not buying in the first place. At most, it might generate some transactional noise if retail outlets report sales in real-time... but if they report only once a day/week, noise from such returns would vanish as long as final sales exceed fake sales.

Re:Won't work that way

[necronom426]

Here in England we don't normally have anything that we can't forward through. The worst one is my most recent DVD - Alien versus Predator. It shows a load of crap about not copying the disc and piracy etc, then starts showing film trailers! I've never been so annoyed at a DVD as I am when I put that in.

Paul.

Do a good deed for today - Click here to help me get a free Opera licence.

Re:Won't work that way

[justforaday]

Funny. I just hit either the Menu button or the Chapter Forward button. This works on both of my DVD players and I've never come across a disc that one or the other didn't work on. Of course, I could just be lucky in that for some reason my DVD players are less restrictive than others.

Re:Won't work that way

[dave_mcmillen]

I HATE the previews on DVD's that can not be skipped over. I preffer previews to be on a DVD in a "bonus" section. If the preview is forced on me, I get very frustrated, I have zero interest in what I am watching.

I hear ya!

I recently had an odd experience: my wife bought a DVD for our daughter (Mulan 2) from a second-hand bookstore. It was cheap, and after viewing it, I thought it must be a copy rather than an official version. Analyzing why I thought so, I realized that it was because it didn't have much crap at the beginning, and what there was, you were allowed to skip over. Can't possibly be an official studio release, if you're that free to choose what you watch . . . Gave me a bit of chill to realize that this was the way to tell the difference -- but if starts making enough of a difference to people's purchasing decisions, it should give the studios a chill, too.

Re:Won't work that way

[antiMStroll]

Quebec French != France French. Similar, but no longer exact.

Re:Won't work that way

[Anonymous Coward]

How can they justify _selling_ software that is specifically designed to circumvent copy protection? This is the same company that makes clone cd/dvd. By the logic of their business model, I should be able to just download it from a p2p network.

Re:Won't work that way

[NanoGator]

" Buying and returning unopened wastes everyone's time and otherwise has the same net effect as not buying in the first place."

The point isn't to destroy inventory. Actually, the point is to NOT cause harm to the retailers.

Retailers, however, DO keep a close eye on returns. If, on a particular day, Best Buy sold 200,000 copies of Gigli, then the next day they were all returned, they'd definitely know something was up. With that much money going in and out, they'd probably at least want to know wtf is going on.

Re:Won't work that way

[parkrrrr]

Shrek 2 might be an exception, though it responds just fine to the fast forward button. For reference, this is on a Pioneer DVD recorder, which might take such things a bit more seriously than the latest offering from iLo or Apex.

I miss the "other" undocumented feature on the Apex AD600A that made it forget about unskippable content if you turned off PBC and then turned it back on.

Re:Won't work that way

[InvalidError]

Best Buy might want to know what is going on... and decide to solve the problem by adopting a credit-note or 90% cash/charge-back refund policy. (Getting 100% cash refund is still possible but often requires a spare afternoon and enough knowledge of retail laws to scare managers.)

People deserting movie theaters, video clubs and movie aisle of all major stores would send a much clearer message.

Re:Won't work that way

[NanoGator]

"Best Buy might want to know what is going on... and decide to solve the problem by adopting a credit-note or 90% cash/charge-back refund policy."

If they did that, then a few people would be out $2. In the mean time, Best Buy still has a number they can attribute to people actually boycotting.

"People deserting movie theaters, video clubs
and movie aisle of all major stores would send a much clearer message."

They would blame piracy. "Nobody's going to theaters because they're downloading movies off the net!"

Re:Won't work that way

[InvalidError]

> They would blame piracy. "Nobody's going to theaters because they're downloading movies off the net!"

And independent research would then point out that download activity on major movie trackers and other systems used to trade movies has dropped by 40%.

Yes, I know, none of this will ever happen because too few would be willing to put up with any sort of inconvenience a potentially greater good.

Re:Won't work that way

[NanoGator]

"And independent research would then point out that download activity on major movie trackers and other systems used to trade movies has dropped by 40%."

Perhaps, but I SERIOUSLY doubt that'll matter to the *AA. They'll look for a number like "4 billion copyrighted files traded a month" and complain about it.

(Note: Just to be clear, I really do disagree here. I'm not just arguing for the sake of arguing. Please don't feel I'm intentionally being an ass or that I'm trying to run you into the ground.)

"Yes, I know, none of this will ever happen because too few would be willing to put up with any sort of inconvenience a potentially greater good."

Heh yeah, it really is academic. In all fairness, though, I don't think that many people really care. I mean, it's hard for me to complain when I don't get my panties in a twist about Walmart moving in or the gov't using Microsoft software to apply for federal grants. To each is own, I guess.

Re:Won't work that way

[westlake]

Boycott?

It is nonsense to talk about boycotts when pre-orders can take a DVD to the top of the sales charts months before release. Disney sold five million units of The Incredibles in its first week.

Re:Won't work that way

[InvalidError]

At least, The Incredibles is one of those titles worth watching... quite good for an action-comedy animation.

Re:Won't work that way

[Fireye]

Not copyprotection, but region/market protection :P

No, Probably Not

[automatikzen]

I was reading through the Senate version of this bill last week, and as I recall, there's language included that basically says the bill explicitly doesn't affect skipping of commercials, etc, one way or the other. IIRC, it says you can skip through part of a work (objectionable content), but doesn't say anything about skipping whole works (which explicitly includes commercials, warnings, etc.)

Re:No, Probably Not

[LoverOfJoy]

That's ok...I can handle one second worth of each commercial or warning. Preferably the last second where it all goes black.

Why do we need this?

[Anonymous Coward]

This legislation shouldn't be necessary. If we didn't have bullshit like the DMCA, there wouldn't be a stranglehold on the dvd players. The market would just provide us with dvd players capable of fancy content skipping features.

Why use crippled hardware?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you use hardware which perpetuates the problems on these discs? A Linux box in a slimline consumer case with DVD drive and appropriate software will play your discs the way you want.

If you want to change the way a commercial disc is played, tell the Linux box what you want and it will remember your preferences (or even list of preferences) for all future viewings.

Upload these preferences to the net, and download preferences from other people. You could even make them auto-update from a 'stock' source of preferences ("only the movie", "skip all the non-content stuff" etc), so that any semi-common DVD from any source would play the way you wanted, first time.

Heck, if you REALLY wanted, you could even set this box to play the DVDs the way the studios set them up. Although why you'd want to...

Re:The culture of "now now now"

[borgheron]

Because everytime I start that movie I don't want 10 minutes of crap forced on me that I can't skip.

GJC

Real reason no PG-13/R DVDs

[LoverOfJoy]

Why would they make a DVD with both an R and a PG-13 version when they can release the R now and in a few years re-release it as a Platinum Family Edition?

I don't have this problem

[rangek]

I don't have this problem because I refused to buy a DVD player until I could find one that either lacked or could easily be modified to lack the "you can only do what I tell you" (AKA UOP (user operation prohibited)) "feature". So I bought a Daewoo 5700, burned a CD, and haven't had to worry about Macrovision or UOP or regions or any of that stuff.

See, the market can handle this. You just have to decide which is more important to you, your freedom, or instantaneous gratification. (It is a sad statement about our society that I have to make such a decision wrt a stupid DVD player though...)

or for slashdot

[strider44]

skip[!sex(female nudity)]

Re:or for slashdot

[the phantom]

Yeah, but that would cut a two hour movie down to about 27 seconds.

On second thought, that is probably just about enough time for the average slashdotter.

FBI Warning = PG-13

[LoverOfJoy]

I do NOT want my kids watching that FBI Warning. With that dark background and ominous silence my kids would be scared to death!

Re:FBI Warning = PG-13

[isny]

>I do NOT want my kids watching that FBI Warning. With that dark background and ominous silence my kids would be scared to death!
Sounds awesome. Kind of like 2001. Got a torrent?

Uncrippled DVD Players

[eno2001]

I already have one. It's called Xine and it rocks. It can also play DVDs from other regions without having to fiddle with the region coding on the drive and the computer does a great job of converting PAL to NTSC. But best of all, I can skip right through trailers and other crap that isn't essential to the main feature with ease. Just tap on the right arrow key a few times and I'm right through all the shite. Looks great on my TV as well. GNU/Linux (Fedora Core 3) makes a great Media Center OS.

Re:wounded and hurt

[LoverOfJoy]

*uses newly legal technology to skip past offtopic posts*

I've got a better solution:

[PotatoHead]

Build DVD players that do exactly what their user wants them to.

I've been using Ogle for a number of years now. It's very nice to just ask for the movie and get it. The family was spoiled by that player and still bitches often when one of the consumer players, we purchased for around the house, does not obey their just play the movie directives.

Re:I've got a better solution:

[Guspaz]

The advantage with Flash storage goes beyond just storing simple things like if you've viewed the previews before or not. You can store information related to the interactive menu systems, which could be MORE interactive. Or it could be as simple as storing settings last used for that movie; audio settings, subtitle settings, etc.

ReplayTV's Comercial Advance...

[boopus]

No one seems to have pointed out that this seems to explicitly legalize Comercial Advance. ReplayTV gave up and stopped skipping comercials automatically as a compromise with the media industry. Hopefully they'll put it back in again.

Re:ReplayTV's Comercial Advance...

[poot_rootbeer]

this seems to explicitly legalize Comercial [sic] Advance.

The text of the bill that I saw explicitly referred to home viewing of movies on DVD. I don't see the relevance to skipping over commercials in television programming using a PVR.

Re:This doesn't mean they can make the DVD players

[tepples]

that doesn't mean that the industry has to license CSS to a maker who wants to do this in the future.

Unless Congress patches the DMCA and clarifies its relationship to antitrust law to give electronics businesses the advantage over entertainment businesses.

big deal !

[croddy]

xine and mplayer have had this for years. pssshht

Re:big deal !

[croddy]

alright, guys. redundant i can understand -- but flamebait? come on!

Re:This doesn't mean they can make the DVD players

[Aero Leviathan]

Wow, that's going to suck. I buy an HD-DVD player, then months later the manufacturer pisses off the HD-DVD committee or whatever it is, and the license is rescinded (if I understand this correctly). Then my HD-DVD player won't work with any new HD-DVDs that come out after that point in time? And I did what to deserve this?

Ugh..

Re:sig

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for spoiling it :[

Oh, and its Force Grip. Why? because it constricts their internal organs as well, as if you had their whole body in your grip. You don't just crush their windpipe.

I remember

[Anonymous Coward]

when cable was something you paid for to circumvent advertising.

Arrgh!

[John Pfeiffer]

Yes, I hate prohibited user operations. My DVD player can disable macrovision, play any region, and even play all sorts of computer video files. But it can't let me skip the goddamned FBI warning, which is annoying when it's in like 5 languages on your DVD.

But really, it's one thing to not be able to skip that, but you can't do ANYTHING when that's playing. A couple days ago, I put in the wrong Firefly DVD, and had to WAIT before it'd let me stop the player. WTF?! It's almost enough to make me condone piracy. Atleast the pirates strip the PUO's from the damned disc images!

You realize you can fast forward, right?

[Hamster Lover]

The ads can be FAST FORWARDED through in a few seconds if you peg the fast forward.

I had the same problem with an unskippable ad on a DVD a few years ago and tried to FFWD through the FBI warning and the ad. Voila! A few seconds to the main menu.

Annoying? Absofuckinglutely, and I wish there was a law against ads on DVDs, but when there's a buck to be made...

Re:You realize you can fast forward, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Like I've posted before, if your remote has a NEXT button press it at the beginning of each ad.
This is usually faster than the fast forward, although it does require a little extra physical labor as you have to press the NEXT button at the start of each ad.
Or rip it like I and other do to remove all that crap.

Totally agree regarding the potential for included

[PotatoHead]

flash memory.

I just don't think selling it as a cure for artifical limitations is doing anyone any favor that's all.

"Microsoft, anyone?"

[cp.tar]

IIRC, Robocop loaded a COMMAND.COM when he booted up...

Although we can see it was an SF movie; not even Windows has the fourth directive installed.

Windows crashes even in Gates' face...

Re:This doesn't mean they can make the DVD players

[VidEdit]

Yes, you have it right. That kind of threat should really keep licensees in line.

This is Congress we are talking about.

[msjacoby]

"Could this be a step in the right direction towards uncrippled DVD players?"

No.

What is a motion picture

[Anonymous Coward]

motion picture
n.
1. A movie.

movie
n.
1. A sequence of photographs projected onto a screen with sufficient rapidity as to create the illusion of motion and continuity.

Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, Houghton Mifflin Company.

Looks like you can skip ads on tv under the law just fine.

Altered artistic work

[xenobyte]

Am I the only one who has a problem with the idea that altering a movie is breaking the artistic work of the editor and director?

In my opinion - if it should be allowed at all to perform this kind of editing there should a mandatory notification/warning screen each and every time something is skipped. This way nobody grows up without knowing that what they've been watching has been edited (butchered) from the original form, perhaps even inclining people to seek out the full version as adults to experience the real thing.

Re:Altered artistic work

[Secrity]

In this case, the operators of the system have to take actions specifically aimed at causing the DVD player to skip parts of the DVD, the operators are fully aware that they are going to miss portions of the DVD.

If the user is a parent and the viewer is a child, the child should eventually figure out that the movies that they have been watching at home were being censored. If a child has been watching these censored movies and hasn't figured it out by the time that he is about 14 or so, it won't matter; the kid will end up being either a missionary or a Wal*Mart greeter for the rest of his life.

I think that your criticism would be more appropriate for movies that were edited for television or even worse, for in-flight movies.

Re:Altered artistic work

[xenobyte]

I think that your criticism would be more appropriate for movies that were edited for television or even worse, for in-flight movies.

Don't get me started on those... ;)

They are usually prefaced with a 5-10 second notice screen warning that the content has been altered for television (etc.), but if it was up to me alterations of any kind should be bannned.

I don't think it would make much sense to view the non-violent 5 mins of the 2+ hour movie "Natural Born Killers"... If people object to minors watching the violent parts of a movie I think it would be better not to watch the movie at all, or to watch it with the minor. Editing should never be nessesary.

Re:Altered artistic work

[Secrity]

I agree that editing of movies is a bad thing and I would never have used this sort of thing with my kids; who are now 14 and 16 and are allowed to watch just about any DVD that the local video store has for rent.

However:

Just as I don't think that the US government (which is now jointly controlled by the Religious Right and by Corporate America) has any business saying that I can't watch movies that the religious right considers to be dirty, I also don't believe that the US government should have a law that prohibits members of the religious right from watching sanitized movies if they want to.

I am not advocating illegal duplication of movies, I am advocating not prohibiting the use of technology to skip the parts of DVDs that contains the sort of images or language that the viewer doesn't want to see or hear.

Re:sig

[Anonymous Coward]

He was just trolling you.

Re:This doesn't mean they can make the DVD players

[Lonewolf666]

I guess this depends on the laguage of the license contract between manufacturer and "HD-DVD commitee". If the "commitee" does not have a contract clause that allows them to rescind the license, they would be asking for a lawsuit.

Hatch sponsoring the bill

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is extremely ironic, because once the CSS license is revised to prohibit this sort of thing, the only people left doing this sort of thing will be toast under the DMCA.

breaking copyright

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately the really interesting argument, essentially moot by advances in technology, is whether it's legal to edit the movie ON THE MEDIUM IT WAS SOLD ON, namely VHS.

The way the industry originally got started was editing videotapes, on top of the real, licensed product. The studios had a cow over "copyright", but they were legit bought-at-the-store videotapes, so the material was licensed.

There was a huge smokescreen of copyright violations, artistic integrity, etc, which was kinda wierd because if the audience was on an airplane or at the other end of the public airwaves, the studios didn't seem to mind so much.

We're still left with the interesting bit that the on-screen editing is not much more than an automated fast-forward button parents press for something they don't want their kid to watch. It's tough to say it's illegal to hire someone to press fast forward whenever just before the scenes they know are about to happen.

All I want to know is when are we gonna see the Phantom Edit in this thing to automatically take out Jar Jar, and auto-insert alternative pieces of sound and video... Or is it illegal to change channels back and forth while the movie's playing?

what problem ?

[Anonymous Coward]

DVD players can already skip through programming, what's new in this ?
Only rental DVDs have adverts and you just press forward and it skips it, or just hit 'Menu' and it jumps to the title page. I don't see the problem !?
I've never heard of a crippled DVD player, are they only crippled in USA ?

Re:what problem ?

[andrewweb]

Google for "preventable user operations" or PUOP's.

You can have sections on your DVD where pressing the Title, or Menu button is ignored, likewise fast-forward or whatever.

This is usually to FORCE you to have to sit through a certain section, most usually an advert.

The reason you don't see the problem is that you haven't hired one of those DVDs yet.

IIRC, the first time this hit in anger was with the Region 1 copy of "The Sixth Sense" - well, it was the first time I heard about it and there was quite the uproar.

However, I think the article pertains to sections within content that can be skipped, and not to the removal of PUOP's - so in other words, I doubt this would have the desired effect.

Return your Broken DVDs

[ajs318]

If I ever bought -- with my own money, earned by my own hard graft -- a DVD that had adverts on the beginning that refused to skip, I would take it right back to the store and demand a refund. If I press the fast-forward button, I expect my DVD recorder to honour that. I can fast-forward through the adverts on my home-made recordings {when I didn't sit through the show just pausing them out} and I expect to be able to fast-forward through adverts on other people's recordings, too. I do not see anything unreasonable about this expectation.

If the player doesn't fast-forward when you press the fast-forward button, then something is obviously broken. If changing the batteries in the remote causes it to fast-forward when you press the fast-forward button, then that to my mind proves the batteries were faulty. So if you have to change the DVD to make the player fast-forward when you press the fast-forward button, I'd say it's the disc itself that is faulty.

I think everyone should start demanding refunds on broken DVDs that don't fast-forward properly, and/or on broken DVD players with fast-forward buttons that don't work -- and threatening to sue for time wasted watching unskippable content. After all, our time is worth money, yes?

Re:Return your Broken DVDs

[poot_rootbeer]

By "threatening to sue for time wasted", you're pretty much proving that your time is NOT worth money, if you have enough if both to spare that you can take up the hobby of barratry.

Oh, and good luck getting a store to give you anything but store credit or an exchange for the same title on an opened DVD return.

Re:Return your Broken DVDs

[ajs318]

Sale of Goods Act 1976. Goods not fit for purpose. Entitled to a cash refund.

It needs that anyway

[Second_Derivative]

Can't the F/OSS community come up with ONE damn working media player? VLC is the closest I've seen but it's still got some minor niggles.

A while back I made a custom box with an MPlayer OSD. That was an ... interesting experience.

Re:It needs that anyway

[geminidomino]

Can't the F/OSS community come up with ONE damn working media player?

Umm. No?^WYes?^W

Dammit, which one will keep me from getting modded -1, Troll?

Re:This doesn't mean they can make the DVD players

[ajs318]

Somebody committed Criminal Damage if they did something that deliberately caused a HD-DVD player you owned to stop working. I'd call the Old Bill if I were you.

Would this legalise 'the Phantom Edit'?

[Andy_R]

As far as I can tell, it probably would.

For those who don't know, the Phantom Edit is Star Wars episode 1 with all the Jar Jar cut out. More info here

The religious right trumped the movie producers

[Secrity]

This is simply a power play between the movie producers and the religious right. The movie producers did not want their creations messed with and the religious right wanted a technical solution that is able to remove scenes/language from DVDs that they find objectionable. The religious right won this battle. Normally the religious right is is wrong because the are forcing their values on other people. I am afraid that I agree with the religious right on this issue because they were fighting for the right to do something in the privacy of their own home that doesn't hurt somebody else.

I also wonder if^h^hwhen the movie studios are going to use technical means to thwart methods used to skip objectionable parts of a DVD.

Re:The religious right trumped the movie producers

[Anita Coney]

This does NOT give users the right to edit commercially bought or rented DVDs in their own home! Do you really think Congress would toss out the DMCA?!

This gives COMPANIES the ability to decide what is objectionable, program that information in their DVD players, and sell those players to consumers. When an "objectionable" DVD is played the consumer can choose to use the edits the COMPANY has determined are appropriate.

I wish this was about choice. I do think we have the right to edit movies for our own personal use. But let's get this straight about this bill; it gives NO rights to consumers.

RoboCop is supposed to be funny

[LanMan04]

I agree with your comment, extect that RoboCop is meant to be funny. It's a very camp movie, remember the "5000 SUX"?

I think it would have been much funnier if the ED-209 has just kept destroying that poor executive even though he was already dead; it's just about as bad as a product demo can go....still cracks me up how callus and uncaring they are about the guy that got blown away, they're just like "clean this shit up". Hehe, evil OCP.

Don't mod me offtopic, he brought up RoboCop. And yes, DVD with multiple settings would be great. The same thing is true of Braveheart; they had to cut the number of frames in half of the really bloody parts to avoid an X or NC-17 or whatever.

This does not allow us to skip annoying content!

[Anita Coney]

From Wired, "Viewers would not be allowed to use software or devices to skip commercials or promotional announcements 'that would otherwise be performed or displayed before, during or after the performance of the motion picture...'"

In other words, you can skip over someone cussing, but if Miramax decides to advertise hard core porn in the middle of their movie, it'd be illegal to skip THAT!

And what about a movie like Happy Gilmore?! With all of the product placements, nearly the entire movie would be unskipable!

Moral rights

[caitsith01]

All four of you are wrong. Well, not necessarily but I thought I'd continue the theme.

Anyway, moral rights are on the rise irrespective of free speech issues. Moral rights originate in the European school of intellectual property rights, which is more concerned with protecting the author's rights as a way of encouraging creativity. The Anglo-American view of IP has traditionally been more focused on IP as a commodity and encouraging creativity through creating commercial value in the resulting works (i.e. making them tradeable).

Under WIPO and various other international instruments, however, limited moral rights now reflect the European view in a system that is largely built around the Anglo-American view. This is interesting because the concept that there is some nexus between the author and the work in question actually comes back to a fundamental question of art, i.e. is it the art itself or the process of creation that is significant?

Philosophical issues aside, it will increasingly be the case in developed countries that the *author* of a work retains certain inalienable rights with respect to that work, irrespective of who buys and sells what to whom. For instance, authors will retain rights against derogatory treatment of their work, no matter who owns it.

And I must say I tend to agree with the great-great-great-grandparent that free speech should ultimately trump these rights. But that's just an opinion, not what's actually happening.

Re:Moral rights

[Gr8Apes]

nice segue into something that is happening vs what exists. I'm not sure I believe in "moral rights", motals, yes, but rights? Next we'll be having ethical rights too.

I'm not sure moral rights came out of IP rights either, it sounds like something that would more likely have come out of the Church more than anything else.

RE: More Freedom for DVD Players?

[hscoggin]

A better question might be, "why is the Federal government involved in deciding what DVD players can and cannot do?" How about they all go home, stop taking several trillion dollars a year from us, and let us - the market - decide what we want?

This is for 3rd parties.

[golden_spray]

The reg covered this bill quite well yesterday. Their analysis is that is law is for 3rd parties who sell the "skipping info" to concerned parents. It also includes harsher penalties for bootleggers.

that's nice

[Anonymous Coward]

But it would be nicer if the government didn't have to step in and give consumers what should be thiers already.

This is why you copy DVDs.

[DroopyStonx]

Problem solved.

Educate me....

[Zangief]

Was it ILLEGAL to skip ads?!

What kind of law was that?

why the assumption of missing parents?

[hawk]

Assuming that the parents are missing while the children watch is entirely missing the point.

Unless you've already watched the movie a few times, you'd be hard pressed to use your controls to skip the parts that you not only don't want your kids to see, but don't want to see yourself. ALso, you'll generally be limited to fast-forward in this regard, leaving the nudity, sex, and exploding bodies there to view.

My 14 year old enjoys the same kind of SF and fantasy movies that I do. Many, though, toss in their share of gratuitious nudity and sex that make the movie inappropriate for her now (and particularly 4 years ago). She watches these with me, but currently it's a "turn your head while I fast forward" situation. (And frequently, she's faster than I am [And, yes, I *am* glad that she still finds anything more than a brief kiss to be gross!]).

hawk, who usually finds Eddie Murphy funnier after the network censors.

Re:why the assumption of missing parents?

[Kaki Nix Sain]

Seems to me that if you aren't teaching a 14 year-old girl that you are comfortable with her seeing, and learning about such things, someone else will soon be happy to fill that role.

Re:why the assumption of missing parents?

[Anonymous Coward]

Many, though, toss in their share of gratuitious nudity and sex that make the movie inappropriate for her now (and particularly 4 years ago).

I don't know what movies you're watching, but I presume most of the nude scenes involve women. If you're really of the belief that your 14-year-old daughter seeing a woman naked is somehow harmful to her, I'm glad that I don't live in your household.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Region coding

[kehren77]

When they eliminate the BS that is region coding, then I'll start to get excited and believe they are headed in the right direction.

Re:This doesn't mean they can make the DVD players

[kryptkpr]

Yeah right.

I'm sure some manufacturer from China or Tai-wan is going to find a way around this.

Bundle multiple keys?
Allow a way to re-flash with a working key?
Use a different key for each disc?

I'm not entirely sure how a disc is capable of 'revoking' a key anyway.. where's DVD Jon when you need him.

It gets worse

[Saint Fnordius]

On a couple of my DVD's (Region 2, bought in Germany) they bring the copyright warning in every EU language/nation (Austria, Germany and Switzerland all have different warnings) without a chance to blip past. Others bring the warning according to the chosen language.

I'm not going to hold my breath, but I suspect once a country or a group like the EU breaks ranks and lets manufacturers get away with shipping easy-override players, then the floodgates will open. The desire to restrict access always loses to the desire to make money. We just have to show the IP bottleneckers that they are only committing financial suicide with their current practices.

Re:Classfication flags on "Meet the Fockers" DVD

[Anonymous Coward]

In "Meet The Fockers" you can choose between theater version and extended version. Extended version has bunch of extra scenes and it's like 10 minutes longer than theater version. And there's no two encodes I know it for sure since I've checked contents of disk myself with various dvd editing tools.

Re: More Freedom for DVD Players?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're an American citizen, you voted for them. Now shut up, sit down, and drink your kool-aide.

As a fledgling movie director.....

[Quizo69]

I'm enrolled in film school right now. I'm also a reasonably prolific downloader of movies. I also own over 300 legit DVDs and continually buy more. I used to have around 400 DivX's but most of those have long since been replaced by the real DVD which I bought.

I'd like to make money by directing movies. But I too hate the prevailing attitudes of the MPAA/RIAA towards consumers.

I will be doing my utmost to add clauses in any contracts I sign to the effect that the studio is forbidden from having PUOs, ads etc on my own DVD releases.

Further to that I intend to have a quick five second or so message (skippable of course) right at the start to inform consumers that the DVD is consumer friendly and doesn't carry any of the usual crap they seem increasingly infested with (no, I'm not referring to the movie for those looking for a cheap laugh at my expense!).

Look for my initiatives to hit the net etc towards the end of the year with any luck (my film website URL is in my sig but no content there yet).

Some of us believe we can still make money without screwing the consumer in the process.

Re: Japanese DVD player plays English only

[some guy I know]

I have a DVD that I got from Japan that does just that. However thanks to the settings on my DVD player it plays in english, both audio & subtitles.

Thet's prolly 'cuz it's runnin' on 'Merkin 'lectricity.

FYI

[Anonymous Coward]

The space comes after the period/full stop.

Re:FYI

[Anonymous Coward]

Dosn't need to , its optional in proper English

In spain it's much worse

[Anonymous Coward]

Now you have to watch a commercial that says "Now the law acts" and images of people clicking a mouse and downloading and sharing pirated copies. And I have a chip on my DVD that lets me skip any user prohibition but I cannot skip those. If I push the DVD menu button, the anti-piracy video starts again and again.

So you should be glad that you have a short text only warning, because we have text and video...

And not only on original DVDs, it's also on pirated copies...

Re:In spain it's much worse

[Anonymous Coward]

Now you have to watch a commercial that says "Now the law acts" and images of people clicking a mouse and downloading and sharing pirated copies.

Any chance you could post a bittorrent link to that?

Every other word

[some guy I know]

Both are okay. Someone reading only every other word in something I say doesn't harm me. And since I may wish to do the same, I'm stuck having to let others do so too. It's kind of like how someone who truly believes in free speech will defend the right of others to say what they like, no matter how much they disagree with it. The people who only want non-objectionable things to be said are tyrants.

Are you sure?
Notice how the meaning of your paragraph changes subtly if you read only every other word:

Both okay. reading every word something say harm And I wish do same, stuck to others so It's of how who believes free will the of to what like, matter much disagree it. people only non-objectionable to said tyrants.

And, to be complete, every other other word:

are Someone only other in I doesn't me. since may to the I'm having let do too. kind like someone truly in speech defend right others say they no how they with The who want things be are

You missed a part

[some guy I know]

You are both wrong. Copyright holders have the exclusive right to display or perform their works publically (in the US) granted by the US copyright law. Meaning that it is illegal for ANYONE but the copyright holder to display these at all, in whole or in part.

Not exactly.
The end of the paragraph just before the list (in your link) indicates (emphasis added) that "Section 106 of the 1976 Copyright Act generally gives the owner of copyright the exclusive right to do and to authorize others to do the following: [...]".
This means that it is legal for people other than the copyright holder to display, perform, etc., the copyright holder's works, provided that they have the copyright holder's permission.

Preview Ads = Objectionable

[MadRat]

How likely is my definition of objectionable - meaning those damn previews that alot of players force you to watch - will be included in this bill?

Read the whole bill first before giving support

[HTH NE1]

The Bill is still in the Senate ( S.167 ) So we should all write to our Senators and let them know that we support this bill

I think you should read the rest of the bill first before you do that. It also contains the titles referenced in the story Congress Declares War on File Leakers.

Re:Read the whole bill first before giving support

[Naosuke]

Okay, then you should let your senators know your thoughts on that as well. The more people are vocal to their representatives the better the systems works. (Before anyone says that I am being naive, you should know that I was an intern at my state capitol and have seen this work first hand)

business model

[d34thm0nk3y]

I wonder if you could buy new DVDs from somewhere legally. Copy it and rip all the crap out. Re-burn it. Destroy the original (in some proveable way). And sell the better copy for a small markup.

Of course you would be sued eventually, but I wonder if you could win the case?