Slipped discs
I love watching DVDs. The picture quality is good, the sound is great, they're small, virtually indestructible and are often packed with bizarre extras and commentaries. But there's something about these discs that's really annoying me, in fact driving me right up the wall. The liberal use of the "FBI-warning" lockout feature that makes me watch their commercials.
The culprit? The UOP or User Operation Prohibition flag was originally mandated by the entertainment powers as a way of showing the stupid, yet dismissable FBI warning. While on that part of the DVD, the user's controls are locked up, so if they were in fact, a multi-million dollar DVD thief, they would sit there for 30 seconds, contemplate the message and reform.
In the last two years, it has been badly abused. First there's the 30 second FBI warning. Often followed by the same message in other languages (usually French, hmmm). Now we get an Interpol warning. Then they use the UOP to make us watch the little production house animated logo. Each of them. Then comes the worst offense of all: mandatory commercial watching. Some companies use this "piracy-education" feature to show their commercials.
First off, this abridges my freedom. Second off, it's useless and largely ineffective. Third off, the commercials become stale quickly and you might own the DVD for a decade. Fourth off, it's an abuse.
I've made this point before, but I'll make it again. Any kind of regulatory loophole that commercial companies are granted to "stop piracy" will be exploited by them for their own gain. Piracy is real, but it won't be stopped by these ass clowns and their circus messages.
Just to make things worse, I often use a 5-disk carousel DVD player. I can hit a button from the couch and flip through the discs. Except I have to wait for 5 minutes for each one of them.
This is something that Congress should get involved in. Hear from the other side of the "piracy" issue for once--the consumers.
Posted on April 12, 2006
