Denise Haskew doesn’t see why she should be subjected to 1984-style piracy warnings and trailers she can’t skip through when she’s legitimately bought a DVD so she can watch a movie.

Article first published: January/February 2007

Regular readers will know that, despite my love of film, the clangorous mastications of my fellow cinemagoers provides an almost insuperable barrier to my enjoyment of any movie at the cinema. Nevertheless, I’m bashing out this rant while I await the arrival of the taxi to ferry me to the movie theater for the first time since my disappointing and exasperating experience with Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, where those responsible for adapting it to the cinema inexplicably forgot to put any jokes in it. This time I’m off to see Borat. So I will take a deep breath and try not to get too wound up by the baboon-emulative ‘table’ manners about me, and hope that an evening of chuckling along with Sacha Baron Cohen will temper my violent instincts.

Attempting to filter out the chomping and chapping, I’ll grit my teeth through the interminable warnings to respect the people around me by turning off my mobile, not smoking, etc. And I won’t even complain that I’ve been charged more for my tickets because I booked them on line, when the whole purpose of the online box office is to save everyone money by not having to employ so many teenagers with unfurnished heads for whom performing the operation of adding up is no less taxing than performing an off-pump triple coronary artery bypass. No, I’ll keep quiet. After all, it’s somebody else’s venue. I’m a guest. So I’ll just have to go along with established conventions.

The same, however, does not apply when I’m in my own home. I’ll sit where I want, adjust the light levels to suit me, proscribe any or all foodstuffs as I see fit, and not have to worry about being caught smuggling alcohol into the cinema. When I’m comfortable, I’ll put my recently purchased DVD into the player and snuggle down to watch… Trailers. Adverts. Piracy warnings. What!? Haven’t I bought this? Isn’t it mine? Have I not purchased the right to watch someone else’s copyrighted material without having to sit through a whole load of bilge I don’t want to watch, and not even be given the option of skipping forward because my controls have been disabled?

Now, I have nothing against trailers; indeed, I sometimes choose to watch trailers. But that’s what it is. Choice. I want the choice of viewing them or not. It’s bad enough being forced to watch them once. But if I decide to take a break from viewing for whatever reason, I have to sit through them again every time I start the DVD. This can be severely vexing and make the viewing experience a somewhat disjointed one.

The situation isn’t helped by the increasingly temperamental nature of DVDs. I have DVDs from a decade ago that still play well on my machine; whereas some of the more recent DVDs I’ve bought refuse to play if someone accidentally breathes on them while inserting them into the disk tray. Even a stray spec of dust can cause the DVD to skip, necessitating the offending disk being removed from the player and treated with a surgical wipe. This is frustrating in itself of course, but when the reinserted DVD jumps immediately to the trailers and then the piracy warning, by the third time you have to suffer this you really are rooting for the pirates.

And while we’re on the subject, what is the idea behind piracy warnings anyway? Any DVD pirate worth their salt is going to remove the piracy warning when they replicate the disk anyway. To keep it in would be bad business. So the only disks guaranteed to feature a long and patronizing piracy warning are legitimately purchased DVDs. Those who habitually buy pirate DVDs are able to watch their movie without being subjected to any of this Orwellian crap.

Yes, I know it’s illegal to pirate DVDs, but it’s also illegal to steal car radios, but you aren’t subjected to a three-minute lecture telling you what to do if you believe the car stereo is stolen every time you turn the radio on. It’s illegal to copy CDs, but imagine the outcry if every CD had to contain a verbal piracy warning that automatically played when you put it in the CD player, with no possibility of you being able to skip past it. Or every single mp3 track had to kick off with a warning – after all, there are more illegal mp3 downloads than there are pirate DVDs. Imagine you load up your iPod with legal mp3 tracks, but are subjected to some Captain Serious warbling on about illegal downloads between every track. Not quite how the Beatles envisaged Sgt Pepper’s being enjoyed, I’m sure. So why are film distributors able to get away with it, when every other industry has to PUT IT ON THE PACKAGING? It’s because as consumers we don’t moan enough.

The other day, I sat through a DVD warning telling me piracy was illegal and that I should be on the look out for pirates. It even gave me a number to call. It then took me to the feature: Pirates of the Caribbean 2. The person at the other end of the phone wasn't at all helpful.

Denise Haskew After 10 years as a television commissioning editor, Denise decided she needed a more intellectual challenge, so she gave it up to become a model. She has done all sorts of useless jobs, such as magazine publishing and PR. She plans to be on the first big spaceship to leave the Earth, alongside all the telephone sanitizers.