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Slickening the slope toward the pit of obscurity for physical media

Not much worse than making us sit through 20 minuets of commercials for movies "coming to a theater near you soon" for movies that have been out on DVD's for years.

So... The only way to avoid having to watch the warnings/threats not to rip the movie is to rip the movie?

Priceless. This is the kind of thing that you'd expect to read about in a Douglas Adams or Terry Gilliam book but never see in real life.

It's because of that junk I never watch an unripped movie. Even when I rent/buy one, I'll rip it and remove the stuff like this before I watch it.

Gotta love how "Homeland Security" equates with protecting Sony's virtual property. Maybe that's the next terrorist weapon, forcing us to watch pirated movies?

Since the only people who will see the warnings are the ones that DIDN'T pirate the movie in the first place, this has got to be one of the most pointless "additions" to DVDs and Blu-rays ever.

So when the piracy software gets updated, do you think there will be an option to remove those annoyances?

Others have said that it's only incentive to move from physical to digital media; well just wait until the Fed's catch up and you start seeing those warnings on digital copies also... These warnings and auto-previews for titles that have been out for years, I just start the DVD and run to the bath or fridge for snacks while both play to an empty room...

Reauthor disks? C'mon. Piracy is a crime, but today's prices practice is a bigger crime against public. They expect we feed their fat asses while a lot of people starve? Everyone needs to be paid, but let's be fair. Worldwide economy is crippled while just a few spend all our money with useless things like space tour. Don't get me wrong, I approve space exploration in beneffit of mankind, but not space exploitation in beneffit of some lazy rich guy.

This just pushes me that much more into VOD. Optical Media is just killing itself.

Murkalael, on 11 May 2012 - 07:10 AM, said:

So please explain how piracy feeds starving people. How is a space tour any more useless than games or watching movies, neither of which put food on the table?

While I loathe what many content providers are doing, price wise, I loathe piracy more. Let's call piracy what it is, common theft and those who practice it are no more than common thieves. It's laughable and pathetic to try to put a "Robin Hood" or "Jean Val Jean" spin on stealing for personal gain or convenience.

This post has been edited by nonseq: 11 May 2012 - 08:10 AM

nonseq, on 11 May 2012 - 07:30 AM, said:

Flat out stealing is not the answer. Voting with your dollar is. One of the big reasons I like iTunes is because it is ad-free and the movie you rent or buy is just the movie and nothing more. If it does come with extras they are always a separate file the user can choose to watch, download or ignore entirely. That all being said I am pretty darn upset with companies like Adobe and Microsoft that treat me, the paying customer, like the criminal. Both of these companies fail to realize that the pirates never see activation or have to call support to get authorization to install the app again should we fail to deactivate a machine before trying to install on another, which happens when a hard drive fails. It indeed bothers me to no end that after paying hundreds of dollars I still have to ask for permission. This is one of the reasons I wish OpenSource were better than it is. If it were I feel that competition would help dramatically in this area.

Another option is to go back to the way things were a couple decades ago. About 20 or maybe 25 years ago, it was common to see higher apps available with and without copy protection. DBASEIII came this way. You paid a little extra for the privilege of being on the honor system. I wish we still had that kind of trust in this industry. I'll always pay for software.

Another option that I'd be totally onboard with is that if Adobe, Microsoft and others gave us customers an account in which we could manage and thus deactivate our licenses from their server so if we do suffer a hard drive issue we can just deactivate the machine from their server and then activate a new install. Apple does this. I can deactivate a Mac from using my iTunes account. Audible will deactivate everything you have upon request which allows you to start over from scratch and activate the machines or devices you are currently using. And I make use of these features. Adobe, Microsoft and others could learn from this. They are simply too lazy to get it right. They could easily do a lot more to service their customers properly.

Two easy remedies:

(1) Rent the movie and rip the darned thing and cut out the stupid fluff. There is powerful software that does that very easily. Of course, that's stealing though, right? And it would be better to 'vote with your dollars' right? Well, maybe, but stealing is faster, easier and carries more immediate results. Unless you're willing to put off seeing a movie for the next 8 years while waiting for 'voting with your dollars' to actually start to have an effect, just rip that sucker and move on!

(2) Buy or rent the movie, put it in, then busy yourself with preparing snacks, picking up around the room, hitting the bathroom or playing with your navel until the REAL stuff starts.

Either way, this is nothing to get your nuts in torsion about! Oh, and for the record, I'm not saying I actually espouse, use or recommend either method; I'm just talkin' about what I'm talkin' about.

If ever there was a reason to rip a movie or simply quit buying them altogether, it's the damn "can't skip" chapters that come up on DVD/BluRay discs. These serve no purpose what so ever other than to piss off the legitimate consumer.

People are still watching DVD & Blu-Ray? Between VOD and straight piracy, I had no idea that any significant number of people still rely on disc. At the rate we're going people will have abandoned physical media before this new addition is in position to further drive people to piracy.

All these warnings do is irritate those of us who have no desire to copy a movie that we will probably never watch again. Do the government and the media elite actually believe that these warnings will deter someone who is going to pirate the DVD? What's next ... putting a chip into the top of prescription medicine bottles that will read to us the possible side-effects of the medication before we will be allowed to open the bottle and take the pill? Sheesh.

You already can't skip the warnings.

Those of twenty seconds wouldn't be bad. But those that go on and on are the ones I skip - along with all the repeats the movie companies make of their own advertisements at the beginning of the movies. Once is enough, I bought the movie, I could care less about who made it.

How about using that disc space for some bonus features? 20 seconds to wait for the feds to scold you... nice way to treat consumers. Guilty until proven innocent.