Nina’s coworker, who also lives in the building, called up with a problem with a DVD he’d just purchased. It wouldn’t play in either his PS3 or Xbox, so I had him bring it up to try it out on a couple of our DVD-playing devices. When I first saw the case, the first thing I noticed was that the cover was printed at about color laser printer quality. The disc looked even worse, with a smudge in the label and blue ink running into the inner circle, defects I’ve seen from consumer CD label printers. The disc’s data side was a dark blue. I told him I wasn’t surprised it didn’t play in any of his players, because it was clearly a cheap Chinese bootleg. “Nonono, I bought this straight from the official Warner Bros. site!”

The logo on the case — where it would normally say “DVD Video” — said “DVD Download,” which I’d never heard of before, and it said that it was encrypted to play only on “registered” players. Well, I don’t know what’s so unofficial about major game systems from Sony and Microsoft, but I tried it on my own Xbox just in case. It actually locked the system up. I’d played burned DVDs on the system before, so I turned and popped it into Nina’s iMac out of curiosity. The computer spun it up, then immediately ejected it. I’d never seen that before. I told him to contact the seller and ask for a refund.

At first, I thought he’d been duped. That he thought he was buying from the official site, but was buying from some disc burner in China. But I checked out the WB site to make sure. Surprisingly, DVDs purchased from the “archive” section of their site are “produced on-demand,” which is a fancy way of saying “we’re bootlegging our own shit, but selling it to you for more than a bootleg.” I couldn’t believe the shoddy presentation of the entire package, I’ve honestly seen better bootlegs, and they cost about 1/4 as much. Oh, the WB store also glosses over the fact that their shitty encryption will prevent the disc from being played on anything but a plain-Jane, run-of-the-mill DVD player. Who even owns one of those anymore? DVD playback is an afterthought added to other devices so they can throw another feature on the front of the box. Home theater PCs are becoming more and more prevalent. You’re just going to leave all those people out in the dark? What about people that travel with their laptop? They can’t watch Warner Bros archives? What about the college kid whose only DVD player, aside from his computer, is his video game system? Fortunately, most college kids are smart enough to know that it’s easier to just not deal with all that bullshit.

I handed the DVD back to him. He left, disappointed, and I turned around to my computer and started a download of a complete DVD rip of the same movie. It took me about 15 seconds to find. It’s a little obscure, so it’s going to take a little longer, but I’ll have a copy downloaded and burned for him before WB could ship out a replacement disc. Or a refund. And it will play in his PS3, it’ll play in his Xbox, and if he wants a copy on his computer, or his iPod, or his cell phone, he can rip those formats from it, just like he should have been able to do with a “legitimate” copy straight from Warner Bros.

Once again, we see how clueless these companies are in a digital age, and the pirate’s way saves the day.