Let's hope this doesn't catch on with ebboks

[Barty]

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...ment-warnings/

Blurays and DVDs to contain 2 unskippable government warnings of 10secs each.

Yikes.

All to educate the public, of course.

I'm sure someone will have fun calculating the man hours wasted by Americans each year looking at these infomercials.

Anyone ever saw an older person freak out the first time they saw that FBI warning at the start of a VHS? It's funny and kinda sad.

[Belfaborac]

You'd think it was specifically designed to drive people to the pirate sites....

[Giggleton]

what's a dvd?

[morantis]

I am always amazed when someone has ripped a DVD and left the FBI warning there. I also always wondered what the legal deal is with the fact that most TV stations alter the credits at the end of a movie. I do not mean changing the text, but running it faster, or in a smaller version off to the side while the next movie starts on the other side of the screen. And what about the HUGE dancing logo and promos on the major cable networks that take up almost a quarter of the screen at some points. How exactly do the movie companies feel about having that all over the film. They probably don't care, but just a thought.

[Blue Tyson]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

what's a dvd?

Something old people might give you as a present occasionally.

[sabredog]

Noting new here In Australia. We get the usual AFACT drivel on each and every DVD and blu-ray.

[Ninjalawyer]

Meh, on the one hand it's a few extra seconds. But on the other, it's like going to the store to buy a candy bar, but after giving the clerk money, he holds the candy bar above his head and delivers a speech on why you shouldn't steal candy bars before he'll let you take it.

If I were American, I would be slightly annoyed at my tax dollars going toward something so pointless. But I'm not so I'm not.

[toddos]

Originally Posted by Belfaborac

You'd think it was specifically designed to drive people to the pirate sites....

Well, they did acknowledge that this would do nothing to stop piracy, and that it would only affect legitimate customers. Their goal is awareness, I guess working under the assumption that people don't realize it's "wrong" to pirate (I'm pretty sure most people know it's illegal) and thus if they were educated to see how it was bad then they would stop doing it.

Of course it's going to backfire. People already go the piracy route because of skippable trailers and crap on blu-rays and DVDs. Adding unskippable stuff is just going to make even more people pirate.

[xg4bx]

[K. Molen]

This is an oldie but a goodie, and very apropo:

[steven522]

I was just thinking about that little "flow chart" as I started reading this thread.

Sad, but very true.

[ApK]

Not only might more people prefer to get a pirated version just to avoid this annoyance, but the only people who HAVE sit through it are the people who DON'T KNOW HOW TO COPY A DISK anyway, because anyone who DOES KNOW could run off and click the "Main movie only" option and make themselves a new copy. So I would not be surprised if this waste of time prompts some people who didn't know how to make a pirated even if they wanted to, to LEARN HOW.

[JD Gumby]

Originally Posted by Barty

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...ment-warnings/

Blurays and DVDs to contain 2 unskippable government warnings of 10secs each.

Yikes.

All to educate the public, of course.

And by "educate" you mean "threaten and intimidate", of course.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by JD Gumby

And by "educate" you mean "threaten and intimidate", of course.

If merely being informed of the law by a 10 second text screen threatens and intimidates you, you must have had a miserable time in grade school. Or do you have a different definition for those words than the rest of us?

[Harry_Y]

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