Thursday, April 10, 2008

#738 Extended Warnings

Sony is cutting into my bedtime.
I’ve just been subjected to the privilege of wasting time in three languages. In the process, the time I had scheduled to watch a movie before I went to bed was drastically extended.
So tell me, if you were bent on violating copyright laws, do you think that the warning at the beginning of a DVD would stop you?
Do you think it would stop you even more if it was printed in your own language?
Because obviously Sony does. And not only that, they appear to be worried that if you are prone to copyright violation you may also be prone to suing them as a corporation if the opinions expressed in the commentary section of one of their DVDs disagrees with your cheating copyright violating heart.
And I am upset. Because I have been forced to waste my valuable time watching three copyright violation warnings in three languages and three Sony disclaimers of responsibility for the statements of people in commentaries that they may or not agree with in three languages as well.
And worse. The valuable time I was wasting was time I had set aside to waste. And I was trying to waste it watching a movie.
It was bad enough when I had to watch these things in English. Then they added French. Okay, a little involuntarily French instruction is occasionally amusing. But then they added Spanish too.
So I’m worried. If this keeps up, we’ll have the entire Babel of the United Nations and dialects of dying languages from remote south sea archipelagos.
I’m all for inclusiveness, but really, is it so hard to produce a separate French and Spanish DVD?
Maybe they’re worried foreign exchange students are going to pirate U.S. movies back to their mother countries.
Here’s an even better solution. When the DVD starts up, have the first screen give you your choice of language in three languages. Whichever you choose, that’s the warning and disclaimer you get to watch.
Then I can schedule my leisure time better.
And I can sleep and/or dormir and/or sommeil on time
Yes Si Oui?
America, ya gotta love it.

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