Piracy
Found the above image amusing… but I’m afraid I can’t link back to the originator, since I don’t know where it came from (if some kind person can inform me, I’ll update the post to give credit)
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Oz Political Quiz
Very amusing – except that for a Pirate, DVD’s are old-school. If you are going to use BitTorrent why would you bother burning it onto DVD – just watch over the network. The first illustration should simply be ‘watch movie’.
It’s a bit like buying a ‘Freeview compliant’ digital set-top box. It just means you get the same crappy free-to-air TV channels, but they meddle with the hardware so you cannot skip the ads (15-16 minutes of every hour) or even fast forward through them, and you can’t transfer the digital video to a PC.
Do they think we’re complete idiots?
Yes, that thought occurred to me too… wasn’t aware about the deal with the “Freeview compliant” recorders – what’s the point of not being able to fast forward? – but the blu-ray discs are atrocious with their restrictions (just try playing them on your computer)
The DVD format (including blu-ray) is already useless anyway… If you want to transfer to another player, just whack it on a USB stick (quite a few dvd players now play DivX files off USB)
Actually you can still fast forward with Freeview, but they reduced the speed, and they’re rumoured to be looking at technology disabling fast forward for certain ads.
The main changes are that the skip forward function must be at least 10 minutes (on non-Freeview boxes you can configure it to 3 minutes or however long the ads last), and onerous Digital Rights Management is applied to any recorded video files, making it next to impossible to copy them. I don’t know why they bother – the shows aren’t even their copyright.
Freeview is a con – it offers ’15 new channels’, which is merely the five existing ones, a HD simulcast of each one, plus a second channel that just repeats content of the first with different timeslots. They supposedly offer a standardised electronic program guide, but there’s a free one anyway.
I have Foxtel, so just use that…
Blu-ray format is a scam… the idea was that the extra space could store HD, and that in the case of tv shows, fit more on fewer discs.
In the latter case, they don’t bother – they still spread things out more than is necessary – they just have more copy protection (and make it next to impossible to play them on PC).
Like I say, CD/DVD/Blu-ray are all outdated in technological terms.
You get lower video quality & only stereo sound when you download a movie.
The thing is that those anti-piracy ads which help you to determine if the disc you are watching is pirated are going to be spliced out of discs that were pirated.
You wouldn’t download a car!
This is my favourite anti-piracy ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaIlpFi7Y3I
Pure gold
Here’s an article to fire you guys up. Written in a highly inflammatory way which isn’t necessary IMO. But if true, it’s very concerning:
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=17785
I do believe in intellectual property rights and copyright.
However, it’s very saddening to see how clueless and stupid governments and big business execs can be resulting in un-principled legislation just like we see for physical property.
Two recent examples that come to mind are the supposed “kookaburra sits in the old gum tree” rip off by Men at Work and the above article.
“Championed by both former President George W. Bush and current President Barack Obama, …… It aims to enact constant monitoring of citizens’ online activities — even perfectly legitimate ones — and grants border agents in the U.S. and many member states the power of warrantless search and seizures — provisions that would grant them the power to destroy U.S. citizens’ laptops, iPods, or CDs, if the agents suspected that they might contain infringed content.”
“The U.S. Government insisted that the terms of its privacy and rights-trampling treaty were too sensitive to expose to the public”
Not the case assuming you don’t have a Blu-Ray player. Most shows and movies have 720p rips available these days which are easily better quality than DVD. A lot of them have non-stereo sound as well.
Fermista – I can beat that. Try this for an anti-piracy ad!