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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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

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

[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

[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.

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.

[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.

[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.

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[hawk]

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

hawk

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!

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.

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

[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.

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.

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.

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...

[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.

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.

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.

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?

[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.

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.

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.

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 :-)

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.

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.

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: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.

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?

Same Bill as Last YRO Story

[peachpuff]

link from the article.

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

[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

[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

[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.

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.)

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...)

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!

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.

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.

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...

This is Congress we are talking about.

[msjacoby]

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

No.

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: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.

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.

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