Posted by Schrodinger on 12/28/05 19:10

"Mike G" <MY_NAME@NO_SPAMgmail.com> wrote in message
news:4lr4r1ldjmo8smh0u96u5qrft4jf4vqgru@4ax.com...
> On Tue, 27 Dec 2005 19:59:30 GMT, "Schrodinger" <no@way.com> wrote:
>
>>We have bought quite a few DVDs over Christmas, after not buying any for a
>>few months.
>>
>>On every one there is a couple of minute long video about "Why steal
>>intellectual property if you wouldn't steal anything else".
>>
>>This, of course, can't be skipped.
>>
>>I know the pre film unskippable ads (Disney specialism) have been
>>discussed
>>many times, but this is on *every* film.
>>
>>As long as it isn't a DVD filmed in a cinema, the advert is one very good
>>reason *not* to buy DVDs.
>>
>>I am sick to death of the idiots behind DRM enforcement. I suppose we're
>>not at the Sony stage yet - installing virii to enforce their DRM - but
>>it's
>>one step towards this crap.
>>
>>Sorry about the rant, but this stuff is beyond a joke.
>
> Cast your mind back to the 80s when a lot of people owned ZX Spectrum
> computers. If you bought a game such as "Jet Set Willy", you had to
> hunt out a little multi-coloured card thing every time you played, as
> the game insisted you typed in a code from this card as a means of
> "copy protection". This was infuriatingly annoying. Of course if you
> had a pirate version, it was probably cracked to remove this
> protection, so the pirate users actually had a better product than the
> folk who bought legitimate copies.
>
> There were other systems in use at the time, like the myopia inducing
> "lenslock" system (a password was displayed on the screen in a very
> distorted format, and you had to squint through a tiny plastic lens to
> undistort it and make it readable). All of them amounted to the same
> thing.

I remember buying a game with the lenslock system - half the time it didn't
work and you had to pfaff about aligning your TV too. I ended up buying a
pirated version from a friend at school!

> Punishing the people who want to buy your products is never a good
> marketing strategy, but it seems that CD, DVD and game producers
> haven't learnt the lessons of the past. "Copy protecting" your DVDs
> and CDs by making them non-standard (with the obvious side effect that
> they will no longer work on x % of players) is a sure fire way of
> turning many of your law-abiding customers into pirates. Putting
> unskippable ads on your DVDs is another; installing malicious,
> virus-like software on your customers' PCs when your CDs and DVDs
> autorun is yet another.
>
> What really pisses me off about the latter is that they rely on the
> ignorance of the "average Joe/Jane" user who just wants to listen to
> some nice music or watch a decent film, and wouldn't imagine in a
> million years that a company like Sony would launch a full-scale
> assault on his/her PC via a product they have paid their hard earned
> money for. Anyone who knows the truth about this guff wouldn't touch
> it with a bargepole.

I really hope Sony get badly stung by the Texas lawsuits. I suspect,
however, given how much weight the big companies have on what is basically a
corrupt legislature that they will go to appeal and Texas will lose.

> Meanwhile the pirates just carry on as before, barely missing a
> beat...
>
> --
> Mike

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