Logic Fail

[kingandy]

The Family Guy "Season Eight*" DVDs start with an anti-piracy advert that is, to me, more annoying than "You Wouldn't Steal a Car", and falls prey to the same logical fallacies**.

It depicts a happy group of friends sitting down to watch a legally-purchased DVD together. See how wise and attractive they are! They're having a really good time together, and all have massive cocks. This is contrasted with a lonely, greasy, desaturated nerd, sitting in his cold studio lighting and waiting to download the same movie illegally. The fool! Had he bought the same movie from a shop he would be watching it now, he would have friends and be well-endowed. Instead he has no choice but to sit watching the screen as the movie downloads.

This is, of course, fanciful nonsense that serves no purpose. Anyone who actually knows how to download a movie will be perfectly aware that you are free to do anything you please while your diligent computer slave is downloading things. But the part that bugs me most is the false comparison: you can't compare slipping the disk in to downloading the movie.

Downloading the movie is equivalent to going to the shops, ordering online or downloading legally (via Netflix, Xbox Live, iPlayer or whatever). As noted, downloading is clearly preferable to the physical alternatives.

Slipping the disk in, on the other hand, is comparable to firing up the downloaded movie on your burned disk, storage device or DLNA server. And you know what? The downloader will be the one who is quickly served his desired entertainment to enjoy with his family and friends. It's the guys with the shop-bought DVD who have to sit around and wait. Because they're forced to sit through trailer after trailer, and unskippable public service announcements about how if they'd bought this movie legally they'd be watching the movie right now. which is, of course, an inherent lie.

I don't believe I've downloaded any movies for myself that haven't been either unavailable to buy or already owned (eg on VHS), but really, it feels very much like they're trying to tell me that I should.

* Not actually Season 8 of the TV show, it's actually episodes from (I think) seasons 6 and 7. For some reason this irritates me intensely. Not so much that they're releasing random (if sequential) chunks of episodes, just that they label them "seasons" when they patently aren't. Presumably this is because it's the terminology they think the public expects, but it's still a lie.
** Haha! Phallus-y.

Comments

[stsquad.livejournal.com]

I'm totally with you here. If I get what I wished for for Christmas I'm going to start my campaign of digitising our DVD's onto network attached storage. It's a fair better experience than DVDs these days.

While the media industry continues down the path of making the "official" paid experience worse than the pirated one they will always have a piracy problem. The day Amazon started offering DRM free MP3s was the day I stopped using P2P* to find all but the rarest tracks.

* Before that I would sample Artists and then if I liked them buy the higher fidelity (and often lower priced) CDs.

[marcushill.livejournal.com]

Not to mention that the evil downloader doesn't even have to get up off of his fat evil arse to put another evilly downloaded movie on, and that the evil device he uses to get his evil movie from his evil network has no noisy moving parts.

[ed-fortune.livejournal.com]

I strongly prefer the movie ones, where stars turn round and say "Listen, if you don't pay for it, we'll go bust eventually", though I do think cinemas would be better off ignoring this 3D bullshit and paying actual ushers to actually ush.

[wulfboy.livejournal.com]

"If you don't pay for it, we might have to have our outlandishly high payments cut and then where'd we get the money for another little black baby from?"

[wyrddragon.livejournal.com]

Kat and I occasionally think: If we'd downloaded a DVD rip or a PVR rip, we'd not have to put up with these...

[jkatjovi.livejournal.com]

I don't download movies. I haven't paid for one in over a year though because either other people do download them and burn them for me or other people buy them and i borrow them. Where does that put me on the evil list?

Also the cinema has always been a fond night out, i eat and drink rubbish whilst watching on a huge screen with good sound and comfy seats but more and more the comfy seats are broke, the people sharing the screening with me talk, or text or are generally annoying within eye/ear shot and the sound quality sucks. I want a big TV screen and surround sound speakers and the ability to download not yet released DVDs to watch from the comfort of my sofa, with people who don't smell. (off topic a little)

[doctor-kaos.livejournal.com]

I like sneaking my own snacks into cinemas. To watch R.E.D I took a whole roast chicken and a significant tub of roasted and minted potatoes along with a flask of rather cheeky red wine. I'm pretty sure it cost less than the popcorn and drinks would have.

[jkatjovi.livejournal.com]

that sounds more like a feast for kings than a sneaky snack at the cinema. :0

[doctor-kaos.livejournal.com]

Try it, it's fun. If you get caught tell them, you've just been shopping. Nobody in there right mind brings a roast chicken to a cinema, you'll get away with it.

[(Anonymous)]

I think we need to ring F.A.S.T with this in mind. They obviously have no idea what they're talking about. Maybe there's a job in it for one of us.

I think they'd be better focusing on the paranoia of the cyber-copywriter-infringer (or if you will "Scury Pirate") - if you download movies, you're leaving yourself open to computer viruses and card detail stealing super hackers. Maybe it should cut away to a third scene where a gold toothed evil criminal type laugh as the lonely, greasy, desaturated nerd's card details are stolen by his movie based worm. The gold toothed bady could have a white cat.

Then inexplicably they'res go-go dancing.

I'd watch that.

[doctor-kaos.livejournal.com]

Tsk! To scared to post with your name! I know you're sort, you pirate movies yourself don't you? You'd probably steal a car, you'd probably steal and handbag! You'd probably kill a policeman (and after a convulted chain of events - do something horrid in his helmet) - You make me sick!

In other news, the above post is me. Forgot to log in.

[sarahlascelles.livejournal.com]

FAST is software piracy, and they are so incompetent I'm surprised they dont trip over their own feet.

[kingandy]

Thanks, It did occur to me to try that. Turns out they're unskippable.

It does vary. Sometimes the trailers are next-track-able or skip-to-menu-able, and it's possible that older or non-standard (or US?) players won't have the same degree of industry-approved locked-in-ness. I've even managed to fast-forward through one or two. But for the most part, the piracy warning is locked.

[stsquad.livejournal.com]

Of course custom firmwares (or a MythTV box with a DVD drive) often skip the unskippable.

[wulfboy.livejournal.com]

"You wouldn't shoot a policeman, then steal his hat, then go to the toilet in his hat, then give the hat to this grieving widow ... then steal it back again!"

[wulfboy.livejournal.com]

On a more serious note, we went to see Fantastic Four - Rise of the SIlver Surfer" at the pictures (it was not my idea). There was an ad at the beginning telling us that downloade movies are evil and also - and this is the key bit - poor quality because they are downloaded.

The movie, when we watched it, was wonky. The top inch of the screen was cut off. No big deal, but the cinema didn't fix it. So, in fact, watching the movie in the cinema was a poor quality experience.

[kingandy]

Ohh yes, that one. Again, advertising something you've already bought ("How about a nice trip to the cinema?" "We are already there you fool!")

IIRC, it also bemoans that illegal DVDs (those recorded at the cinema) have people talking and getting up and walking in front of the screen. But hold on, that actually happens at the cinema! It is not an advert for the cinema at all! It is an advert for DVDs!