If you’ve ever watched a Region 1 DVD, you’re familiar with the FBI warning that pops up as a disc starts to play, and through which you cannot fast-forward. Now, as Wired notes, that warning has gotten “twice as fierce” with the addition of a Department of Homeland Security logo:
So piracy is now considered a terrorist act?
Further, a second unskippable anti-piracy warning screen now pops up, too:
This is from the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPR), whose Web site does indeed talk about “threats” to “United States interests” and “magnitude of the threat” as if piracy of movies were indeed a matter of terrorism. Holy shit:
the IPR Center protects the public’s health and safety, the U.S. economy and the war fighters.
…
There are more threats to border security, national security, and U.S. economic stability. The IPR Center is prepared to take on these challenges.
As with all security theater, this does nothing to deter anyone who would pirate films, but it does inconvenience and annoy those who’ve legally purchased their DVDs. So the question must be:
What do the FBI, DHS, and IPR hope to achieve with their new antipiracy warnings on Region 1 DVDs? Beyond ratcheting up the national fear level and promoting a state of endless, unwinnable war, that is.
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