Monday, January 05, 2009

Max Barry on Piracy

Nice "open letter" to Warner Bros. regarding their misguided DVD piracy strategy.

Max Barry - Dear Warner Bros.
I’m writing because yesterday I rented The Dark Knight, and I couldn’t watch it. I tried. But when I popped that DVD into my home theater PC and snuggled up on the sofa with my wife, it wouldn’t play.

At first I thought the disc must be damaged. I tried it in my laptop: no dice there, either. So I took it back to the video store and swapped it for a new one. They were very apologetic, by the way, Warners. I guess they understand that physically traveling to a bricks-and-mortar store is kind of a pain, and when you’re in business against digital downloads, you don’t want to make your transactions more difficult than they already are.

Home with my fresh DVD, I tried again. But still: didn’t work. A little Googling later, I discovered the disc was indeed damaged, and by who: you. You’ve installed some new anti-piracy protection onto The Dark Knight DVDs, which prevents the disc from playing in my PC.

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