Random Factoid #491

1 12 2010

While on StumbleUpon, I discovered a graphic that so perfectly encapsulates why so many people are fed up with DVDs.  The studios clutter them up with all sorts of warnings, discretions, legal protection, certification, previews, and menus that make plopping a disc in the player an ordeal.  Why not just have the movie at the click of a button on iTunes, Netflix instant streaming, or – god forbid – a pirated movie site.

If I want to watch a preview, I’ll YouTube it or show up on time to a movie in the theater.  I don’t care that what the people say in the commentary doesn’t reflect the views of your company; can’t you just put that in the fine print on the case?  I don’t care that Blu-Ray is the new DVD player; if I wanted to watch a Blu-Ray disc, I’d go buy a player and some movies.  I don’t care to be informed again by an FBI warning that piracy could land me in jail; why would I buy/rent a DVD, requiring some sort of spending of my own money, if I was planning on pirating it?

Ugh.  Lawyers, stop forcing the studios to make DVDs such a hassle.  For the chart that more humorously explains the frustration of the honest American who spends money on buying and renting DVDs, look below:


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Random Factoid #463

3 11 2010

Big Brother, is that you?

How’s this for an invasion of our privacy – according to Cinematical, “Aralia Systems is taking this one step further and is using a grant ($350,000) to devise marketing-friendly technology that gathers data about ‘attention and audience movement’ in regards to films and advertisements.”  In other words, you had best be keeping your phone in your pocket or the government will file a lawsuit against you!

I’m not paranoid nor schizophrenic (I’m reading “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” in my English class so I know both of those), but this seems like a bit much.  There have got to be better ways to catch movie pirates than by surveilling everyone who attends a movie.  People were upset to know that the government was watching them when the Patriot Act was introduced to catch terrorists; how do you think people will react to find out that they are being watched to catch people illegally recording movies?!?  Those two causes aren’t in the same ballpark!

Technology makes everything harder for artists, and I understand how angry they are when people steal their work.  But this measure just screams of overstepped boundaries.  Of course nothing will ever stop me since I love going to the movies and I wouldn’t dream of pirating them, but won’t less avid moviegoers see this as yet another reason not to attend movies?

If something as silly as piracy leads to the decline and death of the movie theater, I think I’ll have to go vomit in a bucket of Blockbuster popcorn.


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