By the way, in case you ever wanted to know what the FBI warning looks like in French, that is included in every DVD as well, and only God knows why. Maybe the French have a problem with piracy. If that's the case, why aren't they flashing the same warning in Spanish, Korean and Chinese, because obviously, there is a lot of piracy in countries that speak those languages, as well.
Some DVD players attempt to do that these days, but most don't, so you're forced to watch the intro and the FBI threat time after time. On top of that, you then have to navigate your way through the menu, through the chapter selection, and each one of these offers you with very little control. For example, at the menu, you have to listen to the menu music or watch the pre-menu video before you can even start selecting options on the menu. I think this structure of the DVD is exactly what the movie studios like. They like to have control and to force you into experiencing their content in a certain way. This is how they can force you to watch the FBI warnings or force you to watch previews you'd much rather just skip.
The movie studios would much rather see us all stuck in 1984. They really don't want anyone to have the capability to copy, duplicate, distribute, share or otherwise exploit digital content, even if it is just for their own personal purposes. For example, studios don't like you copying movies to your portable media players, PSPs or iPods. As a result, they're losing out on billions of dollars of revenue. Let's face it: I'm not the only one who would be willing to pay for downloadable movies as long as the process was fairly straightforward and they didn't treat me like a criminal from the get-go.
They say they have to protect the intellectual property of their books. When the workaround is not exactly rocket science, don't you think the pirates might have figured that out, too? Really, all this copy protection does at audible.com is inconvenience the paying users, which is why I'm no longer a member of the service. I want books in mp3 format so I can listen to them on my iRiver device or my iPod. I don't want to have to use special syncing software or the special audible.com proprietary audio format, and I don't want to be treated like a criminal if I rip that audio to a format that I can actually carry with me when I'm traveling.
Audible.com just doesn't get it. The movie studios don't get it either, and companies like Sony BMG definitely do not get it. This is the digital age, and content owners would be well advised to stop investing so much effort in treating their paying customers like criminals. Like a lot of customers, I have no problem whatsoever paying for downloadable videos, music or audio books, as long as I can move those files to my laptop, portable media device or mp3 player.
If I'm going to pay for content, I want to actually be able to use it and not be imprisoned by some proprietary technology that assumes I'm a criminal. Think about it: How would you like it if every time you left a retail store, your bags were searched and you had to go through a metal detector? Does that seem excessive? Well, that's how the movie industry, music industry and even the audio book industry seems to treat people. They treat everyone like criminals, and in so doing, they inconvenience their best customers and kill the viability of their services.
The movie, music and audio book industries are out to turn their customers into criminals, as if we didn't already have a prison overpopulation problem. Imagine if everyone who had ever copied a piece of music or a snippet of video were actually put in prison? Frankly, I don't think there's a single online adult in this country who hasn't done that at one time or another. I've ripped music CDs to my computer so that I could listen to them on my iRiver device. If that makes me a felon, then it's a bad law. I've ripped DVD movies into "avi" files and the converted them to "mpeg4s" so I could watch them on my Playstation portable. If that makes me a criminal, then there's something wrong with our criminal justice system. I've paid for all this content; I bought the DVD. I paid for the music album; I just want to enjoy them on my own terms.
I think somebody should manufacture a DVD player that will actually allow you to fast-forward through all the garbage that movie studios put at the beginning of their DVDs. That would be a great DVD player. It could be called the "Total Control DVD Player." If anybody ever comes up with a product like that, please let me know. I'd like to publicize it.