We’ve been watching Stargate Atlantis episodes on DVD, and we’ve noted that after the first four or five DVDs, something changed: The disc starts with trailers for other movies and series, and a spot on how copyright is a crime. And the spot’s a bad one at that: basically a hot girl tells her cracker-wannabe that she shall report him to the police if he doesn’t come to bed right now – bed, or jail, she says at the end. And why am I telling you this? Because the bastards decided that I was *not allowed to skip the crap*.
When I first realized this, I had a hard time believing their impertinence. They sure are not making any friends with that.
I hit stop, talked about it with Claudia, hit play again, and realized that the stupid bastards forced me to watch the entire crap again from the beginning. The gall! Incredible. This goes so much against our notion of what we are supposed to be able to do with “our” material, it just goes to show how the entire “licensing” crapology is unnatural.
So we watched the trailers again, on mute. Then we had an idea: Let’s spontaneously speak a different dialogue for the anti-piracy spot. At least we had some fun. Somebody must have uploaded similar ideas to YouTube.
#Copyright
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Just this single ’feature’ makes me *want* to rip stuff and burn it again without all those creepy ’piracy is the same as eating babies’ spots. Most of the DVDs I have of TV shows now take about 2 minutes before I finally get to play the stuff I want to see. The crowning glory is the ’Depending on the disc the operation may not be allowed’ message I get when I try to skip the crap.
– AlokSingh 2006-09-25 12:21 UTC
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My point exactly! “Operation not allowed by disc” or some such insult. Grrrr! >{
I’m just waiting for the day when the DRM loonies show the message: “Singing along while listing to the soundtrack is not allowed by this disc.”
– Alex Schroeder 2006-09-25 12:54 UTC
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I agree too.
All protections, drm and the likes cause much more trouble to those who actually want to go the legal way than to pirates. After all, you bought the DVD and you’re the one annoyed by the spots. You buy a cd and can not play it on your pc, while your colleagues enjoy the same music from p2p. etc...etc...
Go emusic.com!
– PierreGaston 2006-09-25 13:06 UTC
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This is one of the reasons I watch DVDs on my laptop, which does allow me to skip all this crap. Go libdvdcss go!
– AadityaSood 2006-09-25 17:06 UTC
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Agree 100%. We watched Series 3 and 4 of 24 and had to endure the “you wouldn’t steal a handbag” crap at the start of every-single-DVD.
By the end of it I had an overwhelming desire to steal a handbag.
– GreyWulf 2006-09-25 22:28 UTC
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This is why I tend to put in a DVD and then a minute or so later turn on the TV. 😄
– ChuckSmith 2006-10-04 16:15 UTC
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Haha, that’s what we have started doing, too!
And when we go to the movies, I no longer feel like I have to be on time. Twenty minutes of ads, plus a warning that pulling out your camera and aiming it at the screen is a criminal offense – I don’t want to be on-time for *that*!
– Alex Schroeder 2006-10-04 18:02 UTC