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Comment by chernevik | Hacker News Reader

"It’s a dangerous and troubling development when the platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the facts to incite their users in order to further their corporate interests."

Man, I HATE it when companies do that.

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What I love about that quote is it could clearly be used to condem the PSAs they've been playing in theaters and tacking on DVDs quite some time now. For example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE9-W9JNjio

That anti-piracy ad makes me want to put a bullet through the brain pan.

Nothing in that ad is going to deter me from pirating. Just like the you wouldn't download a car commercials that are made fun of. If I could download a car I would do it in a heartbeat...

ONE DAY, THINGIVERSE, ONE DAY.

http://thingist.com/t/item/23279/

The anti-piracy mentality is so evil. Right now we have a few small categories of goods with zero marginal cost of production -- software, books, movies, and music. But we're setting precedents that can have long-lasting negative consequences. In the distant future we may have real replicators that are able to bring post-scarcity to a broad array of categories. With the precedents we're setting today, these replicators will be saddled with government-backed DRM. In such a world, where food can be reproduced for free, poor people will continue to starve, lest they be accused of "stealing" food.

I think piracy sucks. I am a somewhat sympathetic for students and other low-income people, but certainly when you reach the stage where you can make choices about how to spend your money you shouldn't be pirating any more.

However, the corruption of due-process is worse. It truly is dangerous, and I'm saddened that SENATOR Dodd doesn't understand this (or, more likely, chooses to ignore it so he can make some cash).

> What I love about that quote is it could clearly be used to condem the PSAs they've been playing in theaters and tacking on DVDs quite some time now. For example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE9-W9JNjio

Those lovely, piracy prevention notices/copyright infringement notices on the Blu-Ray's I've purchased. That can't be skipped.

I stopped buying DVDs back when I stopped being able to skip the 15 minutes of commercials and 5 minutes of copyright notices, because apparently I need to be warned in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, etc.

I'm not paying to be advertised to. I'm not paying to be threatened with FBI notices. So my solution is I'm just not paying.

I remember discussing with friends of mine whether or not it would be reasonable to have a DVD player that, upon encountering unskippable content, automatically skipped it. None of us could come up with any difficulty there.

As far as I know DVD is a licensed technology and the companies that produce DVD players probably have some draconic measures in the license to prevent them from doing this. I think there used to be some players with an easily accessible factory settings, and the info about how to tweak the factory settings conveniently leaked, but I’m not sure how that worked in the end.

They can't use the DVD logo if they do that. That's it iirc.

They also can't license the patents related to DVD playback.

I am not 100% sure you are allowed to limit who can use a patent in that fashion. IANAL, but requiring non monetary compensation may not be allowed. http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/matters/matters-9208.ht...

DVD is a huge cocktail of patented technologies. You either license it properly or perish by the lawyers, that’s my understanding of it.

ReplayTV tried something like that about 10 years ago with automatic skipping of commercials. They were sued into bankruptcy.

http://news.cnet.com/ReplayTV-puts-ad-skipping-on-pause/2100...

In my fantasy world where we did this, it would be hacking apart VLC or something similar (which already, sensibly, ignores this dross); not so much the physical hardware (fingers wanted to type harmware, huh) because of the problems you cite.

what's ironic is that the MPAA Anti Piracy Ad made the ONLY thing that's good about watching pirated movie is that you don't have to want the ad....as pointed out by comedian Dara O'Brian: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bxqt0siy34

> I'm not paying to be advertised to. I'm not paying to be threatened with FBI notices. So my solution is I'm just not paying.

So, I take it you feel entitled to the content one way or another? Your way or the highway, right?

Not at all. He feels that he has the right, as a lawful paying customer, not to be threatened and preached to. Imagine if you sat down at a restaurant, and the server lectured you about dining-and-dashing before serving you. It's his right to be pissed off about sanctimonious bullshit from the MPAA

I think I understand why the copyright notice needs to be un-skippable. But the ads/previews/whatever-else-you-may-want-to-call-them have pissed me off since they started putting them on VHS (LONG time ago).

I don't like paying for ads.

I understand, these are the grandparent's conditions for purchase. Someone else might have a different set of conditions. What the grandparent is asking for, then, is prices (and the product itself) to be set per-purchase, per-customer. This does not scale to Hollywood movies.

No, he's not. He is simply saying that they have made the product unpalatable so therefore he is not going to consume it.

This was my favorite: http://youtu.be/jA7FVHkS4to

If taking a car or purse were as simple as taking content online, I'd wager that most people would do it.

The cheat will always cry that he's being cheated.

But the 'honest man' will turn the other cheek?

Wasn't it the users that strongarmed most sites into publicly protesting?

Shh. You'll break the reality distortion field.

I thought that bit was really interesting. The MPAA and other SOPA supporters adamantly maintain that the law would only serve to enforce copyright infringement. Is Chris Dodd trying to say that Google, Wikipedia, etc. have an interest in preserving piracy? Or, more likely, is this simply a rhetorical contradiction?

Anyone here think they managed to write that line with a straight face?

I do. The most frightening effect of political rhetoric is the disruption of the rhetorician's ability to think.

See Orwell, "Politics and the English Language."

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