Hacker News Reader

Comment by billybob | Hacker News Reader

"Defeating a lawfully obtained DVD’s encryption for the sole purpose of short, fair use in an educational setting OR FOR CRITICISM." Sure, I'm going to blog about this movie. Lemme in.

Seriously, "lawfully obtained" should be the only qualifier needed.

View on HN

Next thing I want: to make it ILLEGAL to manufacture any DVD or player that FORCES consumers to watch previews.

I'm serious. I just sat through 10 minutes of previews the other night for movies like "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel." If I don't have a legal right to skip that, music execs shouldn't have the legal right to stop me from playing high-decibel polka music on their front lawns.

My understanding is generally that you can get out of it just before it starts playing (by pressing the menu button, I think?) but once it starts playing it uses the same flag for the anti-piracy warning (or something like that), which prevents getting out of it. This issue does not appear on computers, of course, only DVD players.

Of course, this could have changed in newer DVDs or DVD players; though I haven't encountered any disk which has absolutely no way of getting out of the previews, but I tend not to watch many movies.

Also, I think that I have to point out that you are entirely free to mute the DVD and go off somewhere else until the previews are done, if you're unable to find any other way out of them; "FORCES" is a bit of a strong word, given that you were not (I assume) physically prevented from leaving. This is, of course, not an acceptable solution, but it does eliminate the discomfort of sitting through previews.

There are some discs that make it mandatory to watch something first. One example that kills me is the 2-3 minute long schpeal that plays in front of "Elmo's World" DVDs telling us about all the great things Seasame Street does around the world. On some discs, you can fast forward (not skip). On others, it is mandatory to watch the entire thing. This does pose a bit of a problem when your toddler needs his Elmo's World fix and you have to sit and wait...

For some of these, I've found if Disc Menu on the remote doesn't work, then fast forwarding does. But it isn't 100%. There are some DVDs which are truly a pain :-/

A person that I know who most assuredly isn't me has a policy that the kid doesn't touch original DVDs. That in the process of making non-original DVDs, you can set the DVD to automatically start right at the movie upon insert is just a bonus. (There's an age where setting the DVD to auto-loop is useful too.)

It's just too easy for original DVDs to get destroyed. Also, this person has a car DVD player that this person doesn't really trust not to destroy the DVD on a particularly hard bump. (Ironically, this person's DVD player finds it easier to play the burned DVD copies; the player refuses to play about 10% of the original DVDs this person has put in it.)

Upvoted for consistently referring to yourself in the third person.

I'd say he's actually inconsistently referring to himself in the third and first persons.

it appears you can now refer to yourself in the third person: kids, sesame street... this sounds like an educational setting to me.

There are some discs that make it mandatory that something be played back first. There's nothing stating you can't mute your TV and go do something else for a few minutes.

That said, I consider this an acceptable workaround given the lack of a real solution.

I can't find any way to skip it with my player. And yes, I could mute the previews. Just like they could wear earplugs for my polka concert.

Apparently, haven't tried it yet, if you press STOP STOP PLAY, it skips it. But I have no evidence for this to work.

That's one of the reasons I always use VLC to watch DVD's the first time, and then Handbrake, and then VLC to watch them each subsequent time.

It used to be that very few players actually enforced the "No Skipping" restrictions. Try finding an older player.

From memory when I read the DVD specs many years ago, the no-skipping provision was put in there solely for the use of the FBI warning screen.

It is an abuse of the spec to mark what are basically "advertisements" as such in order to prevent people skipping them.

You can only use a short clip. IANAL but I think before this, it was not copyright infringment to copy a short clip. However in order to to do that, you needed to break the DRM, which was illegal. It's like the clip in the matrix "Why would you want a phone call when you can't speak?"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com