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DVDs, Blu-Rays To Show 20-Second Unskippable Govt. Warnings
bonch writes "DVDs and Blu-Rays will begin displaying two unskippable anti-piracy screens, each 10 seconds long, shown back-to-back. Six studios have agreed to begin using the new notices. Of course, pirated versions won't contain these 20-second notices; however, an ICE spokesman says the intent isn't to deter piracy but to educate the public."
If the intent is not to deter piracy, what are they educating the public about? How to rip their disks to avoid the warning?
There must be an enormous cost associated with this - 20 seconds multiplied by every time a DVD is played sounds like a lot of wasted time, and according to ICE, it's not even supposed to deter piracy. So what's the point?
This handy flow chart explains why. The **AA guys are desperately trying to put themselves out of business. See also The Oatmeal about why HBO is trying to do the same thing to people wanting to buy Game of Thrones .
Dog is my co-pilot.
Or use a DVD player that is not blessed by the DVD consortium.
Is it so hard to make a DVD player that plays the movie when you put it in?
A No it is not hard, just not allowed.
http://www.geexbox.org/ Play your movie. The menu and extras can be viewed if desired.
The truth shall set you free!
put a one time use web entered data key at the end of OPTIONAL previews for a 50% discount on a future movie ticket (only valid on some movies, like the ones the expect to bomb anyways and need extra audience).
This says a) thanks for buying the disk, and b) thanks for watching the OPTIONAL previews.
It would make the buyer feel good and it would get them extra audience for normally losy movies. And it would get them web registrations of users. ((I hate doing the registration stuff, so mine would end up unused or I would pass the number to someone else, but I would still feel good about it rather than the current system))
They are actively punishing people for purchasing. The length of time of the punishment is not relevant. Pirating it is the only sane option. Paying for punishment is something only a few fetishists participate in.
Learn to love Alaska
As with DRMed music, the pirates will win because they OFFER A BETTER PRODUCT.
The pirates are not what caused the music companies to drop DRM. If it was just the pirates, they'd still be pushing broken DRM just like the movie industry won't quit after CSS and AACS and BD+ and HDCP being broken. The only reason is that Apple was dominating online sales and they refused to license FairPlay, they were getting a monopoly on distribution. The studios couldn't live with that but to get competition they had to drop DRM and start selling regular MP3s and AACs. The music industry surrendered, the movie industry will fight to the very last man. Someone drop a few nukes on them and make them surrender please (doing it from orbit optional).
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Interesting that you had those problems with SG-1. I'm in the UK, and actually found those DVDs to be relatively sane in the amount of junk shoved on the front; almost everything could be skipped.
(Aside: I don't think there's any excuse for making anything unskippable, and I think using patents to lock down DVD players so no-one can sell one that ignores the no-skip instruction on the disc even though there is clearly an ample market for such a device is an excellent argument for nullifying that kind of patent entirely, but that's another story.)
I wonder how much of this is going to be locale-based rather than universal, if they're already doing different things on different regions' DVDs (I assume). Then again, I get particularly irritated by having to sit through copyright-related junk at the start of the DVD that doesn't even apply to me because it's based on copyright laws in another country, so obviously not everything is localised for my market (UK).
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I finally got a Bluray player last November and although I have the money to easily afford any movie I want, and would prefer to have the highest bitrate, I gave up after several movies in a row took about 5-10 minutes to start up. I even had one rental that went on for over 20 minutes. Hell, the studio identifications alone take 5 minutes. I may be willing to give the studios my money, but I can't afford to give them my time. I will not pay $40 to be annoyed when I can have the annoyless versions for free.
This puts the final nail in the Bluray coffin for me. I was on the fence and now, I will simply never buy another. Congratulations movie studios! You really know how to sell a product there.
Or use a DVD player that is not blessed by the DVD consortium.
Is it so hard to make a DVD player that plays the movie when you put it in?
A No it is not hard, just not allowed.
http://www.geexbox.org/ Play your movie. The menu and extras can be viewed if desired.
This is exactly the question I was wondering. But why is it not allowed.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I could never understand why people pay twice the price for a name-brand, region-locked dvd player that won't even do what you tell it to.
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
Of course these taxes don't actually entitle you to copy stuff that you don't already own but hey, it wouldn't be corruption and lobbyism if it would benefit anybody but a few select assholes.
Not exactly. In the Netherlands you are allowed to create copies of works for private use (Thuiskopie(dutch for home copy)), even for works you don't own. This is being payed for by the taxes on empty media. These taxes make it very hard for copyright-lobbyists to make private copies illegal.
This is also why downloading content for private use is not illegal in The Netherlands, as long as you don't upload (so bittorrent is illegal for pirated works).