Thursday, August 20, 2009

Who can't watch the Watchmen?

Being the legal upstanding citzen I am, when I ordered my copy of Watchmen on Blu-ray I decided to spend a couple of quid more to get something Paramount Films are pushing at the moment - a legal digital copy of it on a seperate DVD, the intention being to bung it on my ipod.

The inlay came with a little sheet of paper with a unique code. I dutifully inserted the DVD into my PC and typed in the code when prompted. I was asked whether I wished to transfer the file to itunes or Media Player, and I made my choice, clicked 'Transfer Now' and then -

my PC crashed.

"No worries", I thought, "I'll try again". But oh no, Paramount are wise to my little piracy games. Of course I must be trying to download it a second time so I can distribute it to all my friends, terrorist cells and Blackbeard the fucking Pirate King.

"You have exceeded the maximum number of transfers for this digital copy".

"No worries", I thought (again), "I'll just click on this helpful link and bring this little issue to the attention of the lovely people at Paramount". I followed various links until I was prompted to type my problem in a thoughtfully provided little box. I clicked 'Send' and waited. And waited.After two days of no reply, I tried again. My wording may have been a little more aggressive this time, and I may have mentioned I'd already logged this problem with them once.

That was 3 weeks ago. Having read some FAQ files lurking around their site I have to let them know in writing why my transfer failed - that appears to be in the form of actually writing them a letter, my email won't suffice. Of course they haven't sent me an email to tell me this - in fact it's all been very quiet in my inbox on the Paramount front. So, what I thought was a great idea at preventing piracy has had exactly the opposite effect that Paramount would want - I'm tempted to torrent the fucking thing just so I can watch it on a handheld device.

Good work, Paramount.

1 comment:

  1. Torrent away. They obviously don't care or they would have responded to the concerns of a customer!

    ReplyDelete

I love comments. Love 'em. However, abusive or spam or Anonymous ones may well be sent straight to the bin. Thems the rules.