Duct tape and a gun to my head

Those are the only two things that would’ve made me feel even more captive in my seat at the AMC theatre in Eden Prairie tonight. Thought we’d catch a movie as a family on this Christmas evening, and we were forced to endure seven commercials and half a dozen movie trailers (over 15 minutes worth) before the movie started!

I was not happy and went out and talked to a manager (she was a young woman just doing her job so I was kind. She’d obviously been beaten up over this in the past) and she told me that it was corporate “…and the NCN subsidiary that controls the ads. We have to put on 5 minutes worth”. I then called AMC’s hotline when I got home to complain.  Looks like I’m not the only one who is hot about this and there is a lawsuit about movie commercials too.

A couple of years ago, I was equally hot over the fact that studio movies on DVD would “lock out” the ability to fast forward through previews so a viewer was forced to watch several minutes worth of stuff to get to the movie. Now the U.S. House of Representatives is getting lobbyed hard and had a bill pending this session to criminalize methods of fast forwarding but it was voted down…for now.

The content producers are clearly wringing their hands over how to prevent piracy of their intellectual property and I’ve historically been a huge defender of the rights of content producers to own their copyright and the products that result. But I gotta tell ya, I’m rapidly losing my patience with the “duct tape and a gun to my head” crowd forcing me to sit through their inane crap to get to the content I paid for and want.

If you too are not happy about either movie commercials, not being able to fast forward the DVD’s you buy and watch in your own home — and in any way being metaphorically duct-taped to your seat or have a gun to your head held by content producers — write to Congress, the President or State Legislators.