Welcome to reason #12,526 that I'm switching that little "R" on my voter registration card to an "I".

The answer to your query is, it's not that they can't see three feet ahead, it's just that they can't relate to what they see. When a congressman wants to see a movie, he has his staff arrange an invitation and takes his limo to the premiere where he'll be shown to his private balcony--catered reception with stars and director to follow. Now, that's a bit of a hyperbole, but it's not far off the mark. When you and I plunk down hard-earned cash to buy a DVD or DVD player, it's just that, hard-earned. Not something we can write-off as part of an entertainment budget or that we get gratis from a studio lobbyist. It's not that they don't care, they just can't see that _anyone_ would care about something they take for granted, because for them it's as free as air. We proles on the other hand get a little peeved when we slide that $.20 piece of plastic (that cost us $50) into the little slot and all we get for the two hours we pissed away at our jobs to buy the little disc is the privledge of whimpering on our knees to Dan Glickman, slobbering over his ring, and asking if we can pleeze, purdy-pleeze watch the movie that we just paid for.

Actually, according to this article (and others that I've seen, it goes far beyond just the DVD. The proposed law is so loosely worded that it could theoretically make flipping channels during commercials or skipping them on your TiVo against the law as well. It's really mind-boggling.

Sorry, HTML in my link above doesn't work? Anyway, the actual Yahoo! link is too long to cut and paste and will ruin your page layout, so here's a link to the link:

http://the-w.com/thread.php/id=23375

"...it is absolutely incomprehensible to me that Republicans are behaving so corruptly."

Where is the old ace who wasn't so, er... I'll just say "naive."

Come on, quit whining. You know the drill: bitch and moan, send letters (on paper sent through snail mail as well as email and a phone call to the office wouldn't hurt either; persistence, at least up to a point, impresses them with your seriousness), get outraged rock stars or someone on the case. Actually, I don't see a great deal of celebrity help on this one; if printing lyrics on the outsides of cds had come with a pays-every-artist-ten-dollars-a-line rider I am quite sure we wouldn't have had Dee Snider, Frank Zappa and 2 Live Crew saying peep against Tipper Gore's PMRC.

But enough of this oldster's antique memories of the halcyon MTV of yore. When they had actual videos, even though they seemed to convince of a single PrinceVanHalenMichaelJackson medley played back to back twenty-four seven. Enough of that.

There's this little thing: you're all glad to sit around whining that the Big Bad Old Government Meanies are trying to take your favorite toys away, and your response is -- what, to sit and cry for mama? This is your country, you run it. Get to work, or sit back and take it as someone does your work for you. Yes I am in a bitchy mood thanks for asking, but the last people I expect to see were wearing rose-colored contact lenses were Republicans and their supporters; we're at the very least not supposed to have stupid illusions that our representatives are paragons of virtue who can do no wrong. Leave that crap to the Demoloons.

"...even though they seemed to convince..." I am pretty sure I meant to write "even though they seem to consist." I blame the Republicans. They taxed my keyboard unexpectedly.

Andrea Harris (authoress of the above shrieking as well).

That's a rider on the 9/11 security reforem bill! Here's another one, they have a rider on the reform bill to remove the requirement that all meat in the marketplace has to have the country of origin posted on it.....go figure! It's really out of control, nobody has time to read the bill and it will pass, nobody knows who puts the riders on and everyone of them will say they shouldn't be there.....whatever.

When they passed the Patriot Act bill, it had so many unrelated rider it was truely a crime. What can the common Joe do about it, nothin'!

Soybomb......

Attributed to Talleyrand (but also attributed to others)-- C'est pire qu'un crime, c'est une faute!

It's worse than a crime, it's a blunder!

The quote is not as illogical as the translation, ". . . it's a mistake!" might lead one to believe. The point was that a crime, although heinous, can be executed with intelligence, but a blunder is ineptitude and stupidity in action. That's why a blunder is "worse" than a crime.

End of lesson based on an apocryphal quote.

Frank Villon

I once had the idea that, if I were an advertiser, I'd keep a short, fixed message at the bottom of the screen in my ads so it could be seen even while fast-forwarding. I wonder why no one ever did this.

Fuck Hollywood. Like a Viking. After Moore et al. we should be looking to destroy their IP protections, not the reverse.

Still, this particular thing has the whiff of UL about it.

Oh, ya gotta remember that these are the same guys who decided that copyrights should now last some 75 years, just so a few greedy corporations could squeeze a couple of pennies out of some old, old books and films.

Originally, the copyright laws were enacted to ensure that the authors and their surviving heirs could have some hope of financial security for their work. But it has been perverted to ensure that big corporations, not the artist, nor their heirs, will get the benefits.

A small gain for the greedy corporations, and a very large loss for the public, as classic works that aren't profitable enough to market become unavailable and then forgotten.

"When they passed the Patriot Act bill, it had so many unrelated rider it was truely a crime. What can the common Joe do about it, nothin'!"

For once, Louisiana leads the way: The Sportsman's Paradise has a constitutional provision stipulating that no bill shall contain any portion that is not germaine to the general purpose of the bill. The requirement that a bill be in some way detectable as "one thing" applies even to proposed constitutional amendments.

But fundamentally, this sh|t that you hate is going to go on as long as you insist on letting the federal government spend $2,300,000,000,000 a year and employ millions of people, thousands of them in the administration and the congressional staff. You can't cleanse that kind of power of misuse.

There's none of this nelly "we" business involved. I say "you," because I won't have any part of it. I hate your social welfare programs. I hate your officious alphabet-soup agencies that do things the states and the people could manage. There is no f*cking regime on earth that can withstand the corrupting influence of $2,300,000,000,000 and millions of bureaucrats. You can pray to God, but God cannot save you from the regime-obliterating power of that kind of money and that kind of civil "service."

Don't know if anyone else has had this problem, but one of my DVD players (the one hooked to the biggest TV, wouldn't you know) locks up at the end of the advertising with new DVDs... wouldn't be surprised is that this has to do with new DVD code that prevents you from skipping ads!

Ace, this is the second day in a row that you've hysterically attacked the Republican party because you've read a popular account of the provisions of a bill without actually looking at the bill and without discussing the specific language of the bill, hearing testimony about the bill, or what any of the bill's sponsors say it is intended to do. It's rdiculous and irresponsible. If you want to put the lie to the MSM's "guys in pajamas" comments, you'll hold yourself to the same standards you'd expect of the MSM.

Not that you'll care much, but if you keep doing this, I'm going to have to put you in the same category as Sully: someone I used to read.

Ace, surely I must be missing something. I read the linked story and while it's obviously a crummy idea, why are you tying this one to the Republican party? Doesn't make sense to me from what you've linked above. Why go out of your way to shoot your friends when you appear to lack evidence that your friends have done anything wrong?

A case in point would be Charlie Rangel's legislation for enstating the draft. If you'd read about that on mtv.com, would you link to it and call the Republicans "the stupid party" even though they all opposed it? Again, I'm not saying that this is the case, but from what I'm seeing above, there's just nothing saying WHO is responsible for it.

Having said that, I like your strategy of actively opposing Hollywood's interests. That way, when they continue to oppose the Republicans, they come off like self-interested whiners.

I pray this is just a swindle of the movie companies who donated and now expect a favor. Hopefully, Republicans will introduce a bill, expend the requsite hot air, and in the end will let it die. This has ALWAYS been the modus operandi of Liberals and it worked for them for quite awhile. But even so, you ask how stupid can you get? How about W's Amnesty program? Or Ahhnold amending the Constitution???

You are surprised ACE? Look, you are clear on many Democratic faults (that make them uneclectable on the grounds of activist judges and disregard for national security), so open your eyes - and accept the Republican's great flaw:

They are whores to the wealthy.

In policy, that means:

1. No end to illegal immigration, because cheap labor undercuts the American worker and maximizes profit to the owners.

2. Nothing matters more than tax cuts to the wealthy. Not even the need to add 2 active Army divisions. When such a move threatened to scale back the tax cuts, the Bushies then insisted the military was fully staffed - now we have more and more involuntary enlistment extensions, attempts to force veterans back into the service.

3. The taxpayer will pay full price for all drugs given away under the Bush program, rather than negotiate group bargaining prices as the VA does, because Drug companies give the Republicans lots of bucks.

4. The energy bill went down, the transportation one almost did - because of pork inserted by the Republicans to further enrich the richest Americans.

5. In small regulations, like trying to ensure you can't skip by the DVD commercials the fatcat benefactors of the Republicans demand you see - vs. looking out for Joe Blow - the Republicans will side with the fatcats every time.

6. The money being borrowed from China and Saudi Arabia to fund the wealthy here is finally starting to nag the blind supply sider wing of the corporate Republicans and their toadies - huge deficits really do have an impact and really do matter. Go figure!!

*********Based on the responses of 2 kneejerk Republicans, who question your idealogical purity, you are on the right track. Just as the Democrats marginalized themselves by embracing the Far Left, Republicans have to be wary. Are they a Party that strives to serve what 50K a year accountant in Michigan Susan Peloto, who has one son serving in Iraq wants? Or are they a Party that only serves what the Donald Trumps really want? And tosses a consolatory bone to Ms. Pelato that she may have none of her needs addressed, but at least "America is strong?"

It's all of a piece. DVD's "just happen" to allow the disk maker to control some things - fast-forward controls are the least of it. They don't need a law, they just need to embed an FF-lockout into the start of the disk. Likewise for encrypted disks - it's ok for the bigs to copy-protect their IP, but disks YOU peons buy already have the key slots overwritten. You can't encrypt the disk even if you want to.

Anyway, DVD players are already posessed, so this is probably aimed at TiVo users. Those poor schmucks. "Sure, collect all my viewing info, 24/7! Don't worry about paying me, that's ok..."

I blame Disney. But then, I blame them for most ills these days...

Whoa there, tiger. No one's saying that whoever sponsored this bill shouldn't be held accountable, just that we'd like to see at least the slightest shred of further information about it. The linked article is a very weak piece of fluff - hardly what should send someone off half-cocked against the Republicans (or anyone in particular), since no details, sponsors, etc. are even specifically mentioned in the article.

So while your spirited rants about "knee-jerk Republicans", "supply-side toadies", and Donald Trump are amusing, they don't address the real questions here:

• Do the Republicans have anything to do with this bill?
• If so, which ones?
• Is this apparent abomination actually in danger of passing?
• Why doesn't the Republican party simply quit helping the entertainment industry? They are hardly our dear friends.

Personally, I find those questions interesting. If you'd prefer to ignore them and instead pound strawmen to your heart's content, please be my guest. I'll hand you a towel when you're done.

I feel that I should add that the above comment is not directed at Ace, but at a previous commenter. But since no one has a name right now, I've no idea why I bothered.

This same stupidity was mentioned during the BetaMax case years ago. Some clod (a former *gasp* CBS exec) said that even if it was decided to allow people to time-shift it should be against the law to fast-forward by commercials: he called it "theft", saying the ads were what paid for the content and everyone should be made to watch them. Actually, his proposal was so broad that he would have ended up making it illegal to watch one station unless every other station was also being watched. Even Jack Valenti couldn't stomach it.

And Tivo has indeed announced that it can download and show a different commercial if the recorded one is being fast-forwarded...

That's why I bought a TV-Tuner card (capable of cable connection) and software to record to my PC.

With luck, this will go the way of the chip that can refuse to show certain shows (V-chip?) - which by the way is still in your new TV (but crippled) because the law still requires it. Does anyone know how to invoke it?

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