So we wanted to watch a movie tonight -my daughter picked out a DVD, and we were all ready to enjoy it. However, the DVD player had other ideas - sometime between the last time we used it and now it just stopped working. This is where the MPAA's idiotic ideas about "protection" started making my life miserable.

I have no interest in giving copies of this movie away - but I would like to copy it to my hard drive so I could push it to my iPod and watch it on the TV. Sure, I could stick it in my Mac, and hook the Mac to the TV - but what if I wanted to use the Mac? That's why I want to drop the movie into iTunes. This is where Hollywood makes my life difficult. I grabbed Handbrake, but it told me that the DVD is encrypted - so I needed VLC.

So now I have to wait for an hour while that gets ripped, instead of the much shorter time it would take if I could just copy the stupid thing. The funny thing is, the "protection" has managed to slow me down in my attempt to watch content I own. It hasn't stopped me, but it has irritated me. The professional thieves though? They don't get slowed down a bit. So in the end, what's the real value behind all of this protection? Does the MPAA believe that irritating paying customers is a good plan or something?

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