Following on from my blog about Universal's new download service, I want to now talk about how film studios treat their DVD buying customers.

When I pay £15 or so for a new DVD, I expect to play the movie (or whatever features come with it) pretty much immediately. I've paid for my copy, and I expect to do as I see fit other than to make copies and distribute them to my friends, family, customers(!), etc.

It seems that film studios so mistrust their customers that they now put:

a) Anti-piracy "infomercials" right at the start of the disc. In the UK, there is an organisation called FACT - the Federation Against Copyright Theft, an organisation I very much respect for the work that they do, and I have even reported several instances why I've found piracy rampent. One such issue was with a movie I was personally involved with and in which somebody sold me a copy which was quite clearly a copy (and a bad one at that - hilarious typos and grammatical errors could have landed this copy in an issue of Private Eye!).

The region 2 DVDs I have feature a ~1 minute film that states, "You wouldn't steal a handbag, you wouldn't steal a car, you wouldn't steal a movie - piracy is wrong!" and features a school girl seemingly downloading a movie to her home computer right at the end. All of this presented in a most annoying MTV manner.

Most film studios, except Universal, allow you to skip this and head on to the main menu. Universal force you to use the fast forward button to go through this.

b) Movie trailers. It's always nice to see forthcoming movies, but then again I've got the Internet and I can always find out what's forthcoming there. Some film companies stick these right at the beginning of the disc and make you either watch them, fast forward, or if the studio is feeling particularly generous, skip the whole lot and go to the main menu.

c) At the end of some episodic titles, you get the copyright warnings for each and every country that the DVD could possible be sold in. You can't skip these, you can't fast forward. You can either stop the disc and play it right from the beginning again (a pain in the backside) or just wait until they go away (a pain in the backside).

User prohibitions on DVDs are a right pain in the neck for consumers. The anti-piracy stuff is particularly insulting. I know as well as everybody else that you can't copy the movie. So why are movie studios treating their customers like idiots?

So do movie companies trust their customers? Quite clearly, no. They want to DRM everything and have an absolutely say in what you can and can't do. They make you watch silly infomercials. They charge exhauberent prices knowing full well that people will pay them and then blame the high cost due to piracy.

All I can say is that something had better happen soon to protect the rights of the consumer against these organisations, otherwise it's going to all end in tears for both sides..

M.

And they have good reason not to trust the customer to not break the law.
With piracy figures high enough that clearly every disc sold gets (on average) copied 5-10 times at least, they speak for themselves.

Sure it's annoying but I can fully understand why they do it.

And seeing as most complaints about things like copy protection come from people who are wannabe pirates (I wouldn't know if a disc had copy protection, as I never even try to find out...) it seems they're hitting a nerve with exactly the right people, people they'd likely just as soon not have as customers.

I don't so much mind the copy protection measures, personally. As a reformed pirate, I now realize things like CSS are there to protect the content by preventing things like ripping the DVD for redistribution. But, I'm a fair use advocate-- I should be able to watch the content that's on the DVD in any form I choose, whether it's on the player, my PC, or even as an AVI on my portable media device. If they could make some reliable, non-intrusive system to allow me to watch it how I wanted, when I wanted, and watch just what I want, then I'd be peachy-keen.

But, more specifically, the commercials and other copyright notices are why I've just about quit buying DVDs. I've seen certain Disney titles (don't laugh-- my wife's a Muppets fan) that don't allow you to skip the commercials and go to the Root menu-- you have to fast forward. That, and the anti-piracy notices. These things don't take into account that you might watch this video more than one time, and that after the first 5-6 times you see the commercials, they get REALLY old. Additionally, it doesn't take into account that years down the road, you might not be able to buy a product that's being advertised. Can you believe I actually bought a DVD once, and it had an ad for a food product in it? That's simply insane.

If I was kind enough to grace a company with my business, they should be kind enough to not shove a piece of steel wool down my throat as I'm trying to consume what I legitimately bought from them.

"And seeing as most complaints about things like copy protection come from people who are wannabe pirates (I wouldn't know if a disc had copy protection, as I never even try to find out...) it seems they're hitting a nerve with exactly the right people, people they'd likely just as soon not have as customers."

Err, I work in the film industry. My income comes from film studios having to make their money from these disks. I actively support FACT. Is it not ironic that films that I've worked on I cannot bypass the copyright warning, the anti-piracy warning, the trailers, etc. just so I can watch the film? As a consumer (like everybody else), I just want a product that I can sit down and use with minimum fuss and hassle.

Please don't assume that "most complaints about copy protection come from people who are wannabe pirates" because that's simply not true. I've put this point to several colleagues within the industry and they agree with me, but ultimately it's not our decision.

M.

I work in the software industry and I can't bypass the restrictions on copying of software either, not even the software I myself worked on.
Why should it be any different for people working in the movie industry?

Yes, absolutely, you could easily say the same things apply to software, and perhaps especially so in specialist industries (such as film, but that's just ONE example) where software licenses are priced very highly for specialised applications. But again, just because somebody complains about it doesn't make them potential pirates!

I tell you right now software licensing is a pain in the butt. Especially when you're buying that relies on floating licenses to enforce useage. Usually these floating license systems utilise third party software and heaven forbid there's a bug, because if THAT fails you've lost access to the (very) expensive software that you've got. I've seen that happen.

Dongles. Dongles can be lost, and can be expensive to replace. Even they can have complicated initial licensing issues.

Activations. Not too bad, and they tend to leave you alone after you have initially activated the software, but trouble's in store if you change computer or exceed a certain number of hardware changes.

Games CDs that require the CD being in the drive before they'll play. Not too bad, but don't particularly want to keep having to physically inserting and removing disks just to play one quick game of Doom 3.

So indeed, software vendors don't trust their customers too.

M.

Piracy rules here. I am from India and here to watch a new movie nobody shells out $30 :eek: and the movies released in the United states aren't released here simultaneously, this has increased piracy in India. We get high quality DVDs for less than $1 with all the features, some of them without the annoying stuff that you were talking about. With this going on who wants to go for the original ones ?

According to the distros of any digital data we are all pirates, yarh, har,harr.
The DRM is such a nusance to each user of something that was bought and paid for that it is beyond logical comprehension.
I will go babble in the corner again...............:eek:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management