"PCFriendly" doublespeak

[miriam_e]

I just spent hours yesterday and this morning trying to work out why I couldn't get some of my DVDs to play. They are Region-encoded for this region. (Actually, Australian law has ruled that region-encoding is not applicable in Australia -- it is not illegal to defeat it here, but the spineless worms stopped short of making it illegal to force encoding on the Australians.) I simply couldn't get Linux to recognise the DVD. I know I used to play it on MSWindows, so I booted one of my older machines into MSWIndows. It refused to play the DVD too, though it at least recognised that it was a DVD. This had me puzzled till I noticed a program in the root directory of the DVD, called "PCFriendly". It seems that, in truly Orwellian style, this program lets the movie studio make the disk PC unfriendly. After installing the program, which requires you fill out your details (I always fill out such forms with gibberish), suddenly I was able to access and play the DVD... on my MSWindows machine, but still not on my Linux machine.

I decided to do a little web research on this "PCFriendly" program to find out more about it... and was horrified. It tracks the user, keeping details of all DVD titles played from then on, passing on details through the internet, giving all the user's details away (or more likely selling them) to advertisers and other shadowy organisations so that the user's habits are reported on and they can be targetted with advertisements.

So what this has forced me to do is rip the DVD so that I can watch the content on my main, fast computer which is Linux-only. I almost never use Windows nowadays and I only have it dual boot on an old, slow machine.

This makes me wonder what will happen after Windows goes bankrupt and nobody has copies of the OS anymore? These DVDs will become unwatchable, just as so many of my old documents made with "protected" programs are now unusable.

These people in the film industry are truly disgusting. One wonders how long they will continue to get away with pulling such con-tricks and inconveniencing their customers.

If you want to read more about PCFriendly:
http://www.interhack.net/pubs/pcfriendly/

And now I should get back to writing the last couple of chapters of my story. Slackness, thy name is Miriam.

Comments

[greylock.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Have not come across such an evil think yet.
I gather it was a movie DVD? Did it have 'computer only' interactive content by any chance?

[sharpblonde.livejournal.com]

PC friendly obviously= only works with IBM, bitches! Oh, and since you are my bitch, gimme all your info so I can make money off your sorry ass!

We've learned some about targeted marketing (as opposed to target markets :P) in my business program. Sounds SOO sketchy. Actually, you probably know at least some of it, but you should hear some of the crap out there "protecting" users privacy such as assurance reports. Things like assurance reports scare me because they seem designed to make users even less likely to even skim the privacy policies they are agreeing to.

And, on another note, I hate trying to make technologies compatible with each other.

PCFriendly? Bah hum bug!

[(Anonymous)]

There is a reason why I nearly always watch DVDs on the TV screen (well actually the 1988-vintage Commodore 1084 monitor!) and use an el-cheapo DVD-player!

Um ... its the remote control.

(Actually being cheesed off with the zoning bullcrap they've used on PCs - I installed 'AnyDVD' and for ah...hem "remote backups" - 'CloneDVD2.' Even bought a cheap timebase corrector some time ago in case I needed to backup "protected" DVDs onto videotape.)

Shivers man - I'm not running a multinational DVD pirating business. Why can't the film companies keep out of my bloody business?

Regards,
MFG.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

It's a TV series -- the first part of the TV series only. The remaining sets of the series are accessible from any computer.

Yes, it had computer-only extras. They are the only hint that there was anything evil on the disk. On the back of the DVD box, in the list of mostly non-evil extras (like commentaries, etc), it includes "DVD-ROM content -- screensavers & weblinks". There is no mention on the box of "PCFriendly" or that it works only on Microsoft machines or standalone DVD players.

It has been replaced these days by another program I believe, called "InterActual Player". Both are made by the same shonky company, InterActual. I don't know if "InterActual Player" blocks use of the disk.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

I am one of the few people I know who has often read through the "agreements" that everybody simply clicks through. Many of them basically say "You agree to be bound by these conditions, but we aren't bound by anything, moreover we can change the conditions anytime we want without telling you, and you'll still be bound by them."

I have no problem with sharing my info if I can guarantee it won't be used to hurt me or others, but too many groups in society have great irrational fear and hatred of other perfectly innocuous groups. Just by being gay, or having a different skin color, or having a disability, or having particular parents, or even for no reason at all (e.g. the witch burnings -- there are no real witches) is enough to inflict pain and death upon you or, at the very least, to severely limit your opportunities.

I've heard people pooh-pooh the desire for privacy, saying that they have nothing to hide. But it turns out that privacy is more important to our wellbeing than most people realise. Many animals live short, stressed lives if they don't get some privacy, and many simply curl up and die without it.

Yes. I've been having some very depressing thoughts on compatible technologies lately. I'm trying to design a small, energy efficient, desktop computer that fits into your pocket, but compatibility issues are a real nightmare.

Re: PCFriendly? Bah hum bug!

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

I used to watch videos and TV (when I was in an area that had TV reception) on my old Amiga monitor, but it died long ago. Now I watch them on a TV card on one of my computers.

Standalone DVD players certainly have their uses, but I find them really annoying. You are forced to sit through all the screens and stupid shorts telling you that they'll sic the law on you if they don't like what you do and that piracy funds terrorism, for crying out loud! And then you have to go through a bunch of sloooow menus. In the past I found myself preferring to watch inferior, ripped content rather than having to go through all that crap. I could simply click on the file I wanted and just watch it. Nowadays, on my Linux machine using mplayer I can do the same with a disk. I put a DVD in and go straight to the title that I want within the disk. Since getting this program I watch more DVDs and less ripped content.

One of the things that really annoys me about this whole "PCFriendly" event is that the only way I can watch these afflicted DVDs is by cluttering up my hard drive with ripped copies instead of the disks that I bought legitimately and wasted close to $100 on.

[monikajufyt.livejournal.com]

It's pathetic and the worst part is, they're not the only ones. It's a trend in this country and it makes me sick, especially when I find myself buying into it.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

I had downloaded a movie file of "Whisper of the Heart" a while back and showed it to a few people. It has become probably my favorite movie of all time to I will end up buying a copy of the DVD. My sister recently bought the DVD after watching my shared movie file. So that is one sale already that came out of file sharing, and another later.

Another of my favorite movies, "My Neighbor Totoro" is one I also found out about through filesharing. I'd been looking to buy it for some time. After seeing my downloaded copy my sister managed to buy the DVD. I was going to go and buy a copy too (it is such a sweet movie), but when she visited we tried to play it on my computer, and it won't. So looks like I will not be buying that one after all. It is no use to me if I can't play it. The only way I'll be able to watch it is if I rip the video from the DVD.

So there you have filesharing causing people to buy DVDs and heavy protection meaning people need to rip movies if they want to watch them.

Yeah, the hyper-paranoid, coke-addled, movie industry executives has really thought this through.

:/