DVD Fast Forwarding to be banned?!!!!

[Howard]

But VHS is crap. And I'm not posting in that bloody great long thread about why, either

My Toshiba dvd player lets me skip the unskippable 90% of the time, I just press the menu button

[yamangman]

On a similar note, why do film studios think they can get away with charging over the odds for their DVD's and have VHS less expensive? Stop buying the bloody overpriced things. £18 for a DVD and £12 for VHS? Which is the most expensive medium do you think?

[ACiD303]

You buy a DVD for the movie, not the frikkin ads . . . . what next, you cant enter the cinema theatre once the ads have started and they ban you from going to the toilet/popcorn stop if you're inside already?!

Sides, what they gonna do, make it compulsury to hook up dvd players to a server which keylogs ur player/remote???

I do have that teeny tiny little grasp of hope I call the UK government that it will not happen in this country. Are they really that bored of finding real issues to address????

[turkster]

I do have that teeny tiny little grasp of hope I call the UK government that it will not happen in this country. Are they really that bored of finding real issues to address????

Well I think for the people that are trying to make money out of it they are real issues. The article implies that it is the movie and advertising industry that is pushing for this not some bored bureaucrat .

[Zedmeister]

I do have that teeny tiny little grasp of hope I call the UK government that it will not happen in this country.

Really? Crap! (In Jasper Carrot Style)

Tell you what will greet that - apathy. Then after a time, we'll go on about the good old days when adverts never appeared on DVD's....

[EvilMunky]

Trailers i dont mind - adverts i hate.

this is rediculous

[shiato storm]

a distinction must be made between trailers and junk/spam ads.
I quite enjoy the trailers, most of the time anyway. but adverts? GET OUT!

the other option is to save your money and just watch sky/digital movies and record those...
and if you have the ability - save onto dvd off the telly! can you save onto an HD and then compress it down to fit on a cd? I've seen a few DivX movies like that - pretty decent quality too - all on a CD but not sure if you can take the tv sigal and do it direct.

[iMc]

But you can't get all the DVD extras off the tele! Good idea otherwise though.

[Rave]

Guys, the idea that the US government is trying to make fast forwarding illegal is a complete myth. Go here:

http://www.overclockers.com/

And read Ed's articles on the subject, especially part 2. All the bill is doing is making it legal to create devices that can automatically censor copyrighted material. It makes nothing illegal.

Rich :¬)

[Kumagoro]

Surely there doesnt need to be a law for them to make adverts unskippable, its seems from other that Disney already does that, unless in law now they are not allowed to.

I really hope its a myth watching the warnings is bad enough... like its going to make a difference.

[Rave]

Surely there doesnt need to be a law for them to make adverts unskippable, its seems from other that Disney already does that, unless in law now they are not allowed to.

I really hope its a myth watching the warnings is bad enough... like its going to make a difference.

If you're unable to skip DVDs, it's because they have PUOs (Protected User Operations) on that tell the DVD player not to let you skip bits. Various DVD copying programs will strip out the PUOs while they copy the discs, although in my experience the success rate with my Toshiba player varies, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. AFAIK it's still legal both here and in America to make a backup of a DVD that you own, as long as it's for your own use, so that's a way of legally skipping the ads and warnings, albeit that copying the disc probably takes much longer than just sitting through them.

Rich :¬)

[Paul Adams]

I thought the general idea is that the US government, under pressure from advertisers, re looking at making it so things like TiVo boxes cannot skip ads (either during recording or playback)?

This sounds like an extension on that - clarification that end users are entitled to present an "edited" version of the film but explicitly excludes advertisements before, during or after the presentation.


As for the FACT and FBI warnings on tapes & DVDs... why?
Anyone that is going to copy it will exclude these anyway, surely?!
Always baffled me, did that.

[Rave]

I thought the general idea is that the US government, under pressure from advertisers, re looking at making it so things like TiVo boxes cannot skip ads (either during recording or playback)?

This sounds like an extension on that - clarification that end users are entitled to present an "edited" version of the film but explicitly excludes advertisements before, during or after the presentation.

Nope. In fact the act has a quite different effect on TiVo- it seems to make illegal their plan to superimpose banner ads on the screen while it skips through ad breaks. Like I said, read the articles on Overclockers, they make it all very clear.

Rich :¬)

[Paul Adams]

I read the article, but it seems to be an alternative interpretation of the legalese to me, there are a great deal more pages that interpret it the opposite way.
*shrug*

[Rave]

I read the article, but it seems to be an alternative interpretation of the legalese to me, there are a great deal more pages that interpret it the opposite way.
*shrug*

Yeah, but come on Paul, if you're smart enough to get a programming job with Microsoft, surely you're smart enough to wrap your head around a single page of legalese? I had a quick scan of the actual wording, and I couldn't see any flaws in the guy's reasoning.

Rich :¬)

Edit: there's a final update, which I'm reading now. I'd advise anyone interested to do the same:

www.overclockers.com

Edit2: The direct link for the truly lazy: http://www.overclockers.com/tips00694/

[Paul Adams]

Yeah, but come on Paul, if you're smart enough to get a programming job with Microsoft, surely you're smart enough to wrap your head around a single page of legalese? I had a quick scan of the actual wording, and I couldn't see any flaws in the guy's reasoning.

Actuall I'm not a programmer, the last programming I did was for my university final year project, I work in Premier Support specializing in networks - but either way, that would be logical, absolute reasoning and legalese is deliberately designed to be vague which is why it causes so many debates

On reflection, and reading the reviewed S.3021 document, in particular this section below, I am inclined to agree with Rave that it has been misinterpreted:

(11) the making imperceptible, by or at the direction of a member of a private household, of limited portions of audio or video content of a motion picture, during a performance in or transmitted to that household for private home viewing, from an authorized copy of the motion picture, or the creation or provision of a computer program or other technology that enables such making imperceptible and that is designed and marketed for such use at the direction of a member of a private household, if no fixed copy of the altered version of the motion picture is created by such computer program or other technology.’’; and
(4) by adding at the end the following: ‘‘For purposes of paragraph (11), the term ‘making imperceptible’ does not include the addition of audio or video content that is performed or displayed over or in place of existing content in a motion picture.

I think the problem is because the single exemption is trying to cover too much - paragraph 11 is intended for parents (for example, not exclusively!) to be able to skip undesirable sections "limited portions" of a presentation (e.g. playing back an 18-rated DVD in PG-mode), and pararaph 4 is so that TiVo can't use this clause to insert their own adverts to replace the ones being skipped when playing back a recorded broadcast.

It is, however, still ambiguous I think, and potentially open to abuse - what are "limited portions"? for example.
This is talking about "the presentation" - for broadcasts this contains adverts, but are ads on a DVD considered part of the presentation?
Remember that paragraph 11 is an exemption, so if it ads on DVDs are classed separately then it does not exclude them from liability.

My real issue with legalese is that you can put exemptions and clauses anywhere, so looking at a specific quoted section isn't always helpful!


In short, I dunno
*shrug* #2