No Zytrons In Range

An email I was recently required to send a complaint to New Line Cinema (movies@newline.com; their email address is hard to find, but that one seems most relevant) after suffering an embarrassing and annoying experience with their broken copy protection.

Hello,

I recently rented the DVD of the movie “Shoot ‘Em Up” from Blockbuster Online. I was originally planning to view this movie on my laptop, since I have a long train commute to work, but I found I wasn’t able to. The disk didn’t seem to read or work correctly in either VLC or Windows Media Player. Once I got home from work, I instead tried to view it on my Dell desktop computer, but I had the same issues as on my laptop. So I attempted to play the DVD on my Macintosh G5 computer, only to find that it wouldn’t play on that computer either.

I tried:
1) A HP laptop computer, using both VLC and Windows Media Player
2) A Dell desktop computer, using both VLC and Windows Media Player
3) A Macintosh G5 desktop computer, using both DVD Player.app and VLC
4) An Xbox 360 game console

The Xbox is the only device in my entire household that seemed able to play the DVD, and I was finally able to watch the movie using it.

The DVD is not scratched or damaged, so I can only assume that the problem is caused by some copy protection you placed on the disk. I understand the need to protect creative works from piracy and copyright infringement, and as a software developer I often face the same types of issues that a movie studio does.

However, I would never create a product that simply does not work on my client’s/user’s computer to meet this need of copy protection. This DVD is, in a word, defective. All of the above devices have the standard DVD logo on them, and are perfectly capable of playing every other DVD I’ve come across.

Since I rented this DVD and did not purchase it, it would be out of place for me to demand any compensation for the time and effort it took to determine why this DVD was not playing on my various computers. I do hope that you take a step back and realize that one of the primary reasons people pirate movies such as Shoot ‘Em Up is the increasingly strict copy protection that refuses to allow them to play the movie the way they want it played. I’ve never downloaded a movie over bittorrent before, but I sure was tempted when I wasn’t able to play this one after three attempts—I can guarantee the bittorrent download would have played on my laptop the first try!

Thank you for your attention,

- James Schend

I’m not usually one of those foaming-at-the-mouth “DRM and copy protection is evil!” type of person, but making and selling a product that simply does not work in the name of copy protection is way over the line. Way over the New Line (ha ha, get it?)