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Philips Patents Technology to Force Ad Viewing

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the pure-evil dept.

An anonymous reader writes "According to New Scientist, Philips has filed a patent for technology to force viewers to watch the ads in a program. Basically they plan to add extra flags to the Multimedia Home Platform that would stop controls from working until the ads are finished." From the article: "Philips' patent acknowledges that this may be 'greatly resented by viewers' who could initially think their equipment has gone wrong. So it suggests the new system could throw up a warning on screen when it is enforcing advert viewing. The patent also suggests that the system could offer viewers the chance to pay a fee interactively to go back to skipping adverts."

3 of 823 comments (clear)

  1. Re:offensive by Yaztromo · · Score: 5, Interesting
    what pisses me off even more is when they aren't even advertising products, they're just forcing me to watch their "copying DVDs is piracy and is the same as mugguing someone so don't do it" bullshit.

    My nieces, who are 4 years old, have a number of childrens DVDs they like to watch (Disney movies and such). These sorts of discs are the absolute WORST for forced advertisements. One of the discs they like to watch (and I forget which one it is) has a 10 MINUTE advertisement for "Madagascar" which can't be skipped.

    And do you know what the galling part about this is? They own a copy of Madagascar!. And yet, every time they want to watch this other movie, I have to stand there with my thumb on the fast forward button to get through the advertisement for a movie they already own (you can't skip the track, but at least fast forward works to get through it quicker).

    Thank goodness my nieces are generally very well behaved and patient people, and don't seem to mind (or question) the fact that I have to fast forward through these things for them. But still, if you think the DVDs you watch are bad, try pretty much any kids movie. Grrr.

    Yaz.

  2. Re:Fine by me. by antarctican · · Score: 5, Interesting

    When ads are on I go read articles on /.

    I used to hit mute and do the same (or read email) until I got my MythTV box. I couldn't live without it - watching ads and tv in real time, how archaic.

    Actually, this article gives me a better idea, which as probably been thought of before, but it's new for me! Let's start thinking up technologies (like not being able to skip commercials) which we reeeeeally would hate to see come to market. Then let's patent it, and not license the patents. If these media companies can use the law to limit fair use, then I think we should use the law to limit their anti-consumer techologies. We could then make money on the side when they try to implement these techologies by suing them for infringment.

  3. Use it in reverse, to SKIP ads by sakusha · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Phillips was just not thinking clearly when they invented this. There will be a flag at the start of commercials, and another at the end, to tell the anti-skip system when to activate. Just how long do you think it will be before someone figures out how to use the flags to start and stop the fast-forward button? This system of flags would be just as effective at automatically skipping ads.