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ICE & FBI Hatch Ingenious Plan To Make DVD Piracy Warnings Longer

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the that-oughta-do-it dept

Thu, May 10th 2012 06:59am -

Immigrations & Customs Enforcement, still beset on all sides by unflagging movie piracy, has decided to join forces with the FBI in their proven strategy of targeting every pirate’s one true weakness: legitimate customers who bought the DVD. Though the Bureau’s lengthy anti-piracy lectures preceding every movie have had limited impact to date, this exciting new partnership promises to inject them with new life by making them last way longer. It will also reinforce the weight of the warning by reminding viewers that ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations is also watching, not just those sissies in the FBI. In case that doesn’t get the message across, the joint FBI/ICE warning will be followed by a second warning from the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center, which has a less ominous acronym but a much scarier logo:

Ars Technica has answers to all your questions, except for “what’s that torrent site called again?”

Will the two screens be shown back to back? Will each screen last for 10 seconds each? Will each screen be unskippable? Yes, yes, and yes.

If you’re thinking “why the hell would they subject the only people who aren’t pirating films to this treatment?” then congratulations, you’re not ICE Director John Morton. The only thing more insane would be starting every movie with instructions on how to invent the DVD player. Apparently Morton sees method in his madness, though, much like how shamans see method in their rain dances:

The idea isn’t to deter current pirates, apparently (the new scheme requires all legal purchasers to sit through 20 seconds of warnings each time they pop in a film, but will be totally absent from pirated downloads and bootlegs). It’s to educate everyone else. As ICE Director John Morton announced in a statement yesterday, “Law enforcement must continue to expand how it combats criminal activity; public awareness and education are a critical part of that effort.”

Well, I guess it is good to see them experimenting with new ways of doing their job. And if it doesn’t work, I’m betting they’ve got some more tricks up their sleeve, like 30-second warnings, 45-second warnings, and possibly even 60-second warnings if they can work out the complex logistics. With law enforcement this innovative, those pirates don’t stand a chance.

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Comments on “ICE & FBI Hatch Ingenious Plan To Make DVD Piracy Warnings Longer”

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222 Comments
Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:5 Re:

itunes is at version 27 or something and still is incapable of converting video files to a ipod friendly format, unless you count the picture being white for the entire video with the audio intact as acceptable

itunes still cannot manage to copy 100% of my MP3s to my ipod, for no reason what so ever, but sure claims to get those ~120 mp3s loaded each time. These are Mp3s which it had absolutely no trouble copying to my other ipod (except that ipod then of course had its own ~100 mp3s that wouldn’t transfer) with the same install of itunes

itunes will still fuck you over if you don’t realize it automatically sorts your music collection unless you’ve been burned in the past and make sure to keep the music in a nonstandard directory until you can change the settings to prevent it from meddling with your carefully organized collection (and make a external backup, just in case)

itunes will still not locate or see the already encoded album artwork on most songs, forcing you to pick one song from the album to manually add artwork to in itunes (after searching the internet for the picture thats already encoded in the file), thus losing the ID2 tag info that was attached. Because that makes sense?

I also like how some sort of combo between itunes and my current ipod caused at least one specific song to lock up the ipod if attempted to play, but that same install of itunes with a different ipod did not produce the same results. Deleting the song off the ipod-that-locks-up and readding doesn’t fix either. Pirating the album again, with a totally different rip of the same album fixed this. Again, this MP3 played on everything else, including my other ipod.

itunes will still copy songs to the ipod except not and so they’ll show up on the device but when played just skip right to the next track because it didn’t actually copy it or corrupted it, same difference

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re:

Flagged as insightful, on the grounds that over time, most institutions will eventually become concerned with their own self-preservation above all other concerns, and will therefore end up prolonging the problems they were originally intended to solve. (See the DEA and the never-ending “War on Drugs” for another example.)

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:

Flagged as insightful, on the grounds that eventually most institution become more concerned with their own existence than the issues they were originally set up to address and will therefore ensure that the fact that the issues continue to existence and even appear to be growing more threatening will guarantee the funding of the institution or bring increased funding.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re:

Jesus Christ, is there no end to law enforcement stupidity and that of the so-called leaders in particular? i’m betting an untrained orangutang would have better ideas than these mor(t)ons!

I’m sure the orangutang’s do, it probably involves fruit and is more effective.

Jake says:

Re: No thats great

Oh, that’s nothing. The legal limit for the duration of commercial breaks in Britain is three minutes, almost exactly as long as it takes to get up, make a cup of tea or coffee* and sit back down again.

* Our instant coffee is actually pretty good. I missed it more than I missed tea when I was out there.

PlagueSD says:

Re: No thats great

Yep, that’s exactly what I do…Pop the DVD in, make a sandwich, grab a soda. By the time I come back It’s usually at the menu screen. I even consider the previews they put at the beginning a waste. Chances are, I’ve already seen the preview on the internet, or on the rare occasions where I actually stop fast forwarding through commercials to watch a trailer for a movie that seems interesting.

teka (profile) says:

Re: Re: No thats great

This is even better!
if the Ars report is correct these screens come After the main menu. You have to pree Play, Start Movie, Begin, whatever on the menu and Then you get another steaming helping of value-adding content, paid for in part or whole with Your tax dollars, calling you a dirty criminal scumbag because you bought a dvd or BR.

Pitabred (profile) says:

Re: Re: No thats great

That’s why I rip the DVDs and Blu-Rays I own to video files I can put on my media center PC. I can just start them when I’m ready for them, and just watch the actual movie. Or if I change my mind and decide I want to watch something else? It’s a couple seconds, not a 10 minute get up, put the new disc in, put the old one away, wait for it to get through the trailers and crap, and then finally get started dance.

I bought the damn movie. I bought it to watch it. I didn’t buy it in order to be forced to watch or wait through advertisements. Even if I don’t physically look at the screen, they’re still forcing me to waste my time. F that.

btr1701 (profile) says:

Re: Re: No thats great

> Yep, that’s exactly what I do…Pop the DVD in, make a
> sandwich, grab a soda. By the time I come back It’s
> usually at the menu screen.

Well, we can’t have that. It’s unacceptable for you to be missing all that great advertising and those wonderfully scary government warnings.

We’re going need to institute some kind of quiz system where you the viewer will have to correctly answer a set of questions based on the commercials and dire FBI warnings that just played before the DVD will unlock and play the movie for you.

Thanks for the feedback!

Sincerely,
Big Content

Dark Helmet (profile) says:

Let's be fair...

Let’s step back a moment and take some time to thank ICE and the FBI for doing us a bit of a service. I don’t know about you, but it’s often directly after dinner, which usually includes a glass or two of wine, or a deep thick glorious IPA brew (Zombie Dust!), that I take in a movie with whatever female-bits-ladened companion was silly enough to be with me that night. And there is nothing more annoying than having to pause the movie mid-action.

To that end, I want to thank these folks for ensuring that I have both a reminder and enough time at the start of my movie to get in a quick bathroom break. After all, I have yet to see one person studying the screen intently when these “warnings” come up. Instead, that’s when you go to the kitchen, to wherever your blankets are, or the bathroom. Or maybe you spend that time with your “friend” twisting each others niblets for a couple moments.

In any case, 15 seconds really isn’t enough time to do any of that. 30 seconds is better, but really, if the FBI/ICE wanted to do this right, they’d make their “evil piracy warnings” at least a minute long coupled with either the soft sound of running water or that bow-chica-wow-wow music from bad 80’s furry porn.

Get it together people! We’re trying to raise the pirates of tomorrow for Christ’s sake….

Ninja (profile) says:

Re: Let's be fair...

Actually the studios do the rest of the job with unskippable trailers. And it’s amusing, if me and my “friend” start a niblet twisting fun before the movie is rolling then usually it will not be watched.

I think a better solution would be the ICE adding a menu where you could choose the “piracy warning” mode such as the following:

Mode 1 – Quick bathroom break – 30 seconds
Mode 2 – Quick niblet twisting fun – 60 seconds
Mode 3 – Popcorn – 128 seconds (at least in my microwave)
Mode 4 – Not-so-quick bathroom break – 5 minutes
Mode 5 – Wild niblet fun – 2 hours
Mode 6 – Sweet dreams – 8 hours

With each mode they should add specific sound effects/ambience/music for better enjoyment. The watery sound would be perfect for mode 1 and mode 2 would be nice with some random lounge music. Mode 3 could use popping sounds just for the lulz and 4 a loud horn to overlap the.. sounds every1 does in these situations. Mode 5 some soft lounge could be fun too (you could add a song selection screen for that one) and on mode 6 some calm song to induce sleep. Obviously those modes could be experimented and could vary depending on the movie. I don’t think you’d see niblet twisting in Barney DVDs for instance…

:Lobo Santo (profile) says:

Denis Leary kinda already covered this

On his album “No Cure for Cancer”

The topic was cigarette warning labels… but the principle is the same.

(heavily excerpted, memory-wash paraphrased)
There’s this guy, and he wants to pass a law requiring the warning label on cigarettes to be bigger.

As if we’ve just never noticed before.

… “Yeah Bill, I’ve got some cigarettes–holy shit! Have you seen this warning? I thought cigarettes were good for you, had vitamin C and stuff.”

It doesn’t matter how big the warning label is. You could cigarettes in a black pack with a skull and crossbones on them, called ‘Tumors’ and smokers would be lined up down the block to buy them.

Fucking dolt.
(/excerpt)

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Denis Leary kinda already covered this

A friend of mine recently returned from Tahiti and brought me a pack of rolling tobacco. By law, the packaging IS black, and there is indeed a skull on it. Luckily, the extensive warnings were in french, so I was able to enjoy my smoke linguistically worry-free. Kind of disappointed though – thought there was was going to be some sort of cool skull toy in the box.

Anonymous Coward says:

IP and Piracy is the only crime that people insist will stop if we merely ‘educate’ people properly.

So, why don’t we take the same approach to stuff like shop lifting? Force everyone who walks into a store to sit through a 30 second video on why shop lifting is wrong.

Or how about more serious crimes, like murder? If only the police would come barging into public places to remind people that killing is wrong and illegal! Obviously greedy people who murder to steal money, or out of anger and jealousy would NEVER have killed if they had simply been told ‘killing is wrong and illegal’.

Obviously all the media attention to famous murder cases, and high murder rates in big cities just aren’t doing job at educating people that murder is wrong. People obviously thought it was just another Hollywood drama show when they heard about Trayvon Martin being shot and the police taking the killers word for it being self defense against a dangerous bottle of iced tea! Or Casey Anthony killing her baby, after all, it had a Hollywood like ending where the murderer got away with it! That happens often enough in Hollywood crime shows!

Torg (profile) says:

Re: Re:

“IP and Piracy is the only crime that people insist will stop if we merely ‘educate’ people properly.”

I’ve seen a similar sentiment with drugs and underage drinking. What it amounts to is an acknowledgement that there isn’t much reason for people to think out something’s bad on their own, coupled with an admission that conventional law enforcement strategies aren’t working.

Jeremy Lyman (profile) says:

Re: Re:

I’d add into your shoplifting comparison that shoppers would be asked prior to seeing the video if they plan on shoplifting today. If they are then “Right! Off you go, no video for you. Have a great day of shoplifting.”

I think we should also have audio warnings play when we start cars detailing how it’s illegal to steal cars and how police departments arrest people for grand theft auto. It, of course, would be skipped if the car was hotwired.

JEDIDIAH says:

Re: It's not obvious. Really.

It’s not obvious to people that copying something is a crime.

Really.

Even uptight highly moral types might be completely unaware of the legal or ethical implications of copying something. It’s just not on their radar because it’s not a traditional sort of crime.

This is a manifestation of how copyright is really artificial.

John Fenderson (profile) says:

Re: Re: It's not obvious. Really.

It’s not obvious to people that copying something is a crime.

Copying is not a crime. I can legally copy movies I’ve purchased all day long. What’s illegal is copyright infringement, which requires some sort of distribution. I can’t legally give my copies to anyone unless I give all of the copies and the original as a unit. (This ignores anti-circumvention, which still doesn’t make the actual copying a crime.)

I would say that everyone I know knows that copyright infringement is illegal, even the grandmas. I would also say that most people I know considers it one of those BS laws that is of no actual importance to them. I don’t think know anyone who has made the decision to pirate or not to pirate based on the legality or legal severity of the act.

ASTROBOI says:

Re: Re:

Actually they have done this. Cops and do-gooders are forever wasting money on programs like D.A.R.E., subtitled something like “dare to scare the shit out of kids”, and lecture sleepy kids in middle school on the dangers of pot and such. Nevermind that serious studies have shown the programs are utterly ineffectual or that some of the kids they are preaching to are stoned at that very moment.

John Fenderson (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re: Re:

Not to mention that some of those kids decide that “hey, the effects of drugs seem awesome!”

I was one of those. In my younger, wilder days, it was the antidrug ads & coursework that piqued my interest in trying them out.

I figured that if they are trying so hard to convince me not to do something then that means lots of people must be doing it and really enjoying the hell out of it.

Also, the claims of adverse effects were so extreme and obviously bullshit that they must not have had any actually good arguments against them or they’d make those instead.

So I tried them and when I look back on those days now and with the wisdom and distance of time it’s clear that that period of my life made me a better person.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: better title

What they really need to do is offer a hotline number so that people can inform on those they suspect of piracy, there could be a reward, larger one you drop the dime on a member of your own family.

They need to channel the anger and frustration they create with something constructive like that.

PaulT (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re: Re:

“So I was wondering how you are comparing the two, “exactly”.”

The morons he’s mocking with that sarcastic comment have a habit of piling emotional arguments on top of their lies and distortions. Breaking a child’s arm just has the added “think of the children!” plea missing from simply breaking an arm…

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:2 Re:

That is a great explanation.

Personally I was just thinking it would be so much easier to break a small child’s arm than to break an average man’s arm as breaking DRM does take so little effort on the part of the end user. But your reasoning is great and I will happily claim it as my own now.

Jeremy Lyman (profile) says:

Re: Re:

Exactly. I don’t think these guys know how DRM circumvention and DVD duplication happens. You don’t pop it into your home theatre and sit on your couch with the ol’ handycam.

The warnings never get played if the activity they’re “dissuading” happens. That is the opposite of the system you should implement. It’s like a car alarm that only sounds when the owner unlocks it with the key.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:

It’s like a car alarm that only sounds when the owner unlocks it with the key.

Actually, I think that’s exactly what ICE wants to implement. Home viewers who see these announcements are being given an excuse for DRM. The goal is probably to point out pirates and say, “Them! They’re the reason you have to sit through these notices and can’t play this disc on your old machine!” Then the uninformed masses support whatever crazy legislative initiative a pocket Congress rubber stamps next.

Google and Wikipedia can advertise over the entire internet. ICE and the MAFIAA only have limited ad space, and they’re making use of it.

Meanwhile, the car alarm is blaring, “You have to have me because of thieves! Thieves! No matter how annoying I am!”

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re:

No surprise – it seems this is all just a marketing idea so far – once they get the BILLIONS of dollars budgeted to move forward with it, they’ll hire all their over-priced friends to come build the FUD-center behind this shit.

That’s all these guys do – come up with new ways to spend money and keep themselves employed.

fogbugzd (profile) says:

I get a mental image of the old TV commercial where the actor slaps his head and says, “I could have had a V8!” Now I think of people waiting through the warnings, slapping their heads, and saying “I could have pirated this!”

I propose a new diet plan. At the beginning of every DVD we put a message that says “Don’t think about food.” I predict that it would have just about the same effect as the piracy warnings.

Does the extended warning do anything besides inflate some egos at ICE and remind people that piracy is flourishing?

Ninja (profile) says:

Srsly?

So my options are:

1- Buy the original, be locked by region and to specific equipment and format, be forced to watch the same unskippable trailers, the same extended “you are a fucking pirate terrorist satan worshiper, stop doing it, uncle Sam is gonna buttrape you” warnings and then watch my movie comfortably from my sofa

2- Visit [insert alternative illegal source] and then watch my movie comfortably from my sofa.

Tough choice.

Yogi says:

Great!

I seriously think the MAFIAA, FBI, and ICE are on to something here.
The problem is that 20 seconds is way too short – all movies should be preceded or even replaced by a 90 minute long educational movie concerning the evils of piracy.

In fact, to combat piracy, Hollywood should churn out propaganda movies like it did during WWII, this time depicting teenaged American geeks as the evil guys, the pirates that are destroying civilization as we know it.

P.S. this idea has been copyrighted…

Jeremy Lyman (profile) says:

Re: Great!

Come ON, you think people will sit through 90 minutes of insulting warnings before watching the newest Chipmunks movie? They’ll obviously need to break the infomercial up into 10 minute segments and interrupt the feature every 10 minutes for another installment.

This will be more effective too, because people are stupid and will probably forget about the last insulting warning after about 9 minutes.

P.S. Despite the plethora of incongruous lawsuits and settlements you can’t copyright an idea.

JoeCool (profile) says:

Re: Great!

In fact, to combat piracy, Hollywood should churn out propaganda movies like it did during WWII, this time depicting teenaged American geeks as the evil guys, the pirates that are destroying civilization as we know it.

Yeah! Those movies could do things like encourage jocks to pick on nerds and make their lives miserable, because everyone knows nerds never get revenge.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Clearly

That should be the second question.
The first question should be would you like to view this educational content again, with YES autoselected and a 10 second timer to give you time to change it before it autoreplays.
Only once you are past that should it ask if you understand the legal position on piracy with NO autoselected and a 10 sec timer to change it before it autoreplays again.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Clearly

After that there should be a quick multiple choice 10 question quiz on what piracy is with 3 answers on each scenario, non infringing, piracy and fair use.
If you answer any of the questions incorrectly(fair use is not a valid answer on any of them just a defense in court)
Then the educational content would play again.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:2 Clearly

I don’t know about that, having three answers would really make people think and as fair use is never going to be correct it increases the odds of them getting the wrong answer and therefore having to watch the educational content whilst learning that fair use is never acceptable.

Anonymous Coward says:

They need to learn from the people who do product placement in movies and television. No one is going to pay attention to a warning at the start of the movie. Instead they need the protagonist’s motivation being that his parents were killed by movie pirates. They need the bad guys being terrorists from The Pirate Bay. They need the love interest declaring how turned-on she is by legitimately purchased content during the nude scene. Every movie should be required to have ten minutes of on-screen propaganda that pirates wouldn’t be able to remove for fear of missing the good bit.

Movie studios couldn’t even object to this requirement. Otherwise their films would be released unrated and be banished to the sort of theater that is coin-operated and offers complimentary tissues.

Anonymous Coward says:

Hahahaha, ridiculous. This punishes nobody but the honest customer who legally bought the movie. Everyone who’s ever pirated a movie knows that nearly all pirate releases have these warnings cut out. It’s the same with video games that have always-online DRM. Only the people who buy are inconvenienced.

Anonymous Coward says:

Nice!

I would like to commend ICE and FBI for their mashup. It’s nice to see the government, particularly law enforcement, embrace new ways of creative expression. It’s a shame they could not get the IPRCC to join them, but they are new and just “finding” themselves. I look forward to the hour long version of dancing logos.

Bryan says:

Wow, this is thinking outside the box!

quote “Law enforcement must continue to expand how it combats criminal activity; public awareness and education are a critical part of that effort.”

So this is just another example of how people in law enforcement and politicians go after criminals, by targeting the law abiding citizens who don’t break the law. I am sure any creative, effective ideas were shut down immediately by some career bureaucrat in favor of this ridiculous BS.

Quote real meaning “Law enforcement must continue to expand how it combats criminal activity by reinforcing that piracy is STILL illegal and we must focus on getting the message out to people that are honest, law-abiding citizens, who don’t actually commit crimes; Then we can say things like “I implemented tough NEW initiatives to combat blah blah blah” thus implying that they actually accomplished anything but harassing the honest, hard working people who actually pay my salary.”

JEDIDIAH says:

Re: Wow, this is thinking outside the box!

People need to care. People need to understand the details. If you don’t address these no amount of “that’s bad” will matter. People will simply have no motivation to care. There will be no enlightened self interest driving sales or suppressing piracy.

The industry needs to stop annoying people.

Instead they decide to annoy people more.

Capt ICE Enforcer says:

working for pirates

Attention everyone.

Most of you believe that we work for Hollywood. but you are wrong. our goal is to destroy evil Hollywood by having anti pirate labels inserted in each movie every ten minutes, sort of like tv commercials. This will reduce the value of legitimate products while boosting the sales of boot legged copies. This also creates jobs by having people edit this out to increase value. Helping the economy is what we are about. Not immigration, not protecting our borders, and not justice.

Capt ICE Enforcer

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:

But that’s what bittorrent is for…

I always assumed that by downloading a torrent, I was helping someone else keep a distributed backup copy of their content, no?

Even better, there’s no reason to make your own backup when someone has already done it for you.

Now my entire house can burn down and I’ll still have backups of my movies.

TDR says:

Re: Re: Re: Re:

And what happens when your internet connection gets cut off due to a storm or whatever? You lose access to your backups. Also, with torrents, what’s available is only what people put up, and only in the format they put up. But if you’re ripping from a disc, you have complete control over format, size, quality, and every other aspect. It’s not a gamble like downloading can sometimes be. Basically, I think it’s best to spread out your backups. Some physical, and some digital. That way you’re not tied down either way and no matter what happens, you still have access.

And to the poster who commented about wondering if the legacy bozos were going to start offering rewards for people being snitches about copyright, the BSA already does this for software. I think they must have said the words “software piracy” at least a dozen times in a 3-minute radio ad on one of those Fox sports stations. My brother had the station on when he was helping me put my new desk together a while back. Every commercial break that ad would play, it was annoying.

ASTROBOI says:

Re: U.S.-only?

I’ve sometimes downloaded British dvds which were posted uncut, that is with warning, ads and so on. The British warning sometimes warns against “lending or hiring” the dvd which would seem to indicate they feel renting the thing is forbidden too. Don’t they have dvd rentals in the UK? In fact I’ve ripped dvds that have multiple files with assorted warnings in various languages. Apparently they have boilerplate warning files that go on every dvd and then they author the thing to play only those threats that apply to the appropriate region. If you total the files they can be as much as five minutes of playing time. Deleting them helps get things down to a single layer blank.

Chris Brand says:

Re: U.S.-only?

I bet we get exactly the same crap here in Canada.

My gf laughs when I shout things about the FBI not having jurisdiction in Canada. I’m not sure whether she thinks it’s funny that I get annoyed by those warnings or that I’m naive enough to think that the FBI *don’t* have power here…

Anonymous Coward says:

How to stop theft...

At the front of each store/restaurant/house/etc. in the US, we should install a waiting room where a movie plays explaining that stealing is bad. “Customers” will need to sit in the waiting room until the video plays completely, if not then the store/restaurant/house/etc. won’t let them in.

Simple

Anonymous Coward says:

Here’s how to these messages translate:

“Hey stupid! We know you really wanted to pirate this video, but you were too stupid to. So stupid are you that you probably don’t even know that pirating is illegal and hurts lots of people. Since you’re so stupid we wanted to remind you that you’re too stupid to understand and need to be reminded. Crap, out of time. Can we get these extended by another 60 seconds or so. It takes a while for stupid people to get the message.”

Anonymous Coward says:

Their probably thinking, lets piss of the law abiding customers still drinking our kool aide, and blame it on the pirates in order to get a bigger online presence FOR copyright bullshit, the place, undeniably, with the most opposition to copyright bullshit

In which case, technically, the thing that would be “pissing them off”, in atuall fact would be the “warnings” NOT the pirates

Anonymous Coward says:

My hardware dvd player turns on to an internal menu. From here I can select the chapter of the actual movie (I usually guess, its usually the same) and then hit menu when the movie starts if I need to change to DTS or anything like that, then start the movie. I usually manage to skip all previews and warnings this way.

Rapnel (profile) says:

Simplicity

It’s quite simple really, in an ingenious, evil sort of way. Do the most minimalistic, low real value / high perception value thing that garners the most tax payer funding as well as continued industry “donations” thus ensuring the least amount of effort in attempting to solve the actual problem, continued future job prospects for those worthy and furthering a complete bullshit agenda of harassing the public in general. Bravo. All because some dickhead with control over a movie can’t handle change and demands my money from every fucking direction conceivable.

I wanna be a fascist ranger.

PaulT (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:

“Nobody but a pirate would watch a movie a day they couldn’t possibly afford the time or money.”

I don’t know what’s worse – the fact that you apparently think working people don’t have 2 hours of leisure time a day, or the fact that you don’t know that you don’t have to buy every movie you watch.

No, wait, attacking people for being pirates when they’ve only referred to legally purchased content, that’s the stupidest thing…

AudibleNod (profile) says:

Why not books?

The FBI and ICE should team up with book publishers and watermark each page with a ‘piracy is bad..mmm-kay’ label. Come to think of it, TV shows should have a disclaimer bar over the first 15 seconds of each program and have it repeat at random intervals. Radio stations could overlay a track of a guy eating potato chips during each song played. Police officers should hum ‘Hey Jude’ or ‘Happy Birthday’ all day to prevent any recording of themselves from making it to YouTube. Yes, I totally understand why a mandatory government label is needed.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: FFS

Think of it like this.

The sexual abuse of children is a problem that we want to deal with (this differs from piracy in that there is a real problem here)
To deal with it we will tell people how any sex is a terrible thing and they shouldn’t do it.
In the unlikely event that such an education campaign were successful, then people would have less sex, leading to fewer children in turn leading to less child sex abuse.
Then you know that you just have to keep ramping up the campaign until there are no more children and the problem has been solved.

This is literally, thinking outside the box.

Digger says:

This is why I rip my dvds and re-burn sans nonsense

I already make copies for the kids to use while the original sits on one of many shelves filled with DVDs.
I strip off menus, warnings, etc and make them go straight to start of the movie as soon as you put them in, and eject when done.

It’s the only sensible way to watch a movie…

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: another reason

how about not pirating it all, dont illegally download?? oh you won’t do that, because your a freeloading dirtbag, who feels entitled to steal a product rather than pay for it, dont like the adverts and whatnot??? then just drive right thru the redlight, because you don’t want to wait for the green light, see how well that works for you

Dave says:

Well this is just depressing. You see, I buy my movies. I actually enjoy having the DVD in my hands. And the first thought that passed through my head when I heard about this was:

“Damn. Now I’m going to have to start pirating movies.”

Literally, this was the first thought that occurred to me. It’s going to be hard to convince myself to keep spending money on movies when I’ll have to put up with this stuff.

I know people might say it’s only 20 seconds, get over it. But I really don’t feel like paying $X.00 to watch a 20 second warning when I’m already obviously not pirating stuff. I can find other uses for my money.

So well done to ICE and the FBI. I’ve resisted till now, but I guess it’s finally time to start pirating movies.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re:

Buy a drobo it is in simple terms a virtual filesystem coupled with RAID 5 in a proprietary format of course but it is the easiest way to just buy hard drives and don’t care what they have in them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drobo

For those who know how to setup those things which is not easy there are open source alternatives that could come very close to the functionality if you know how to program a little so you can make the hot swap of a RAID 5 and know which hardware to buy which will almost cost the same thing.

Miko says:

When they say the warnings are not for pirates but intended “to educate everyone else,” we can only assume they mean that pirates already have the necessary education. But the key distinction between pirates and non-pirates is (obviously) that pirates pirate. So, the only logical interpretation of the fact that only non-pirates need to be educated is that they intend to educate non-pirates on why they should be pirates. We can only hope that this new policy will do a good job of accomplishing this.

Derek Kerton (profile) says:

Re:

Yeah. And for these agencies to get these logos put up for 10 seconds each by the MPAA…well, that’s free brand advertising. A lot like Nike putting the swoosh on a billboard.

Of course, they’re too deeply immersed in their own BS to understand that the “brand advertising” has a either a negative or neutral effect on a given viewer’s sentiment.

That One Guy (profile) says:

Re:

Door Greeter to first person: “Hello sir, do you plan on shoplifting today?”

Person one: “Hmm… you know, I think I just might.”

D.G.: “Alright then, enjoy your shopping!”

D.G. to second person: “Hello sir, do you plan on shoplifting today?”

Person two: “Of course not, that would be wrong!”

D.G. to second person: “Alright then you filthy criminal, now you’re going to have to come with me to watch a 5-minute video on why shoplifting is wrong, and why you should never do it!”

Person two: “But I just said that I wasn’t planning on shoplifting!”

D.G.: “Right, and this it to make absolutely sure that you don’t!”

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