Why I Hate... F.A.C.T.

Love movies? Sure you do. That's why you're here. But we only love movies - not the bullshit that goes with them. Seeing adverts at the movies is a pain in the arse - remember Terry Gilliam's boringly epic football advert with Eric Cantona that made Attack Of The Clones that much further away? Sick and tired of being peppered with at least two or three road safety ads before each film? I haven't even got a car! She shouldn't have been standing there! And anyway, Scott Smith's 'The Betrayal' looks shite! At least buying a movie on DVD is a refuge from these semi-educational public service announcements.

Well, not really. If you buy the DVD, you haven't got a choice anymore. Slip your shiny new disc in your machine and instead of the menu screen, what's the first thing you see? You get the evil tendrils of F.A.C.T - that's the Federation Against Copyright Theft to you and me; a 47 second advert preaching the dangers of movie piracy, cut to a dated sub-techno soundtrack. "You wouldn't steal a car," it says. Well, I would if it was as easy as downloading a movie, and I'm pretty sure everyone else would too. "You wouldn't steal a handbag," it says. Damn right I wouldn't steal a handbag, I'm a bloke, for heavens sake. That's why I just bought Conan The Barbarian; what do I need with a handbag? For someone like me, who often watches three or four movies on DVD a day, it's several minutes a day I spend wanting to garrotte the evil bastards at F.A.C.T.

It's this type of thing that is really putting me off DVDs. Fundamentally, DVDs are fantastic. But also, thanks to some inconsiderable twuntmonkeys at movie studios, decent DVDs are getting harder and harder to enjoy. I bought the movie - and that's what I want to watch. Instead of being given the product I have actually bought, instead I am rewarded with a minute of unavoidable, patronising rubbish about how 'proper' DVDs are better than pirate ones, patronising rubbish I've never seen on a pirate DVD, incidentally. I can't fast forward through it, skip it or go to the menu and watch the film. I have to see this EVERY TIME I put on these films. Opening my copy of Lord Of War, not only do I get a finger-pointing lecture from F.A.C.T., I also get a 30 second advert for Mars Bars: the AK-47 of chocolate.

Now hang on - I bought the film, not an advert for chocolate. Shouldn't they pay ME for watching this? Is this my reward for being a good consumer? I don't mind the adverts so much, the thing that I do object to is that these advertorials are hard-coded into the disc. You can't skip them, fast-forward through them, or even press the 'Menu' button to get straight to a bewildering array of highly animated menus. These days it's second nature to press 'Menu' and FFWD on one remote control whilst fumbling for the 'Mute' button on the TV, by instinct when I put a DVD in the machine. If that doesn't work, I even go into the kitchen and raid the fridge rather than watch F.A.C.T's latest redundant opus.

For Christ's sake, I KNOW pirate DVDs are crap. That's why I bought a proper one. If I am forced to watch one more trailer for a CGI remake of Happy Scrappy Hero Pup voiced by Jude Law and Bill Murray or Pirate DVDs, I swear I'm going to invoice F.A.C.T. for the time spent. And nothing ever changes: I was fast-forwarding through an equally rubbish 'educational film' about how dodgy video tapes can't be returned to Tom The Dodgy Video Seller At The Market on an old VHS last week. At least I could fast-forward through that. Strange, isn't it? Technology is forcing us backwards to an era of less choice. Thanks to copy restrictions on DVDs, every time my child smears jam on Finding Nemo I have to go out and buy a new one. In the olden days, you could just copy it onto a video tape and not risk screwing up the original.

I've never had a hard-coded, mandatory advert for chocolate, or patronising propaganda on a dodgy DVD being sold in my local Chavporium Pub. Meanwhile, enquiries to F.A.C.T are going oddly unanswered.