You might not have heard of User Operation Prohibition, but if you watch DVDs, you’ve probably encountered it. UOP is the programming innovation that allows studios to disable certain controls on your DVD player for portions of the disc. In other words, UOP is the reason that you can’t skip past the FBI warning or studio logo on any recent major studio release.

There are worse fates than sitting through a couple of boring preliminaries. I guess. Maybe. But the UOP chaff on my Planet Earth Blu-Rays is so bad that I don’t even like to watch them anymore. My wife has to beg me to break them out, and even when she gets her wish, she still has to endure a two-minute-long tantrum of profanity and futile button-mashing (to which the PS3 responds, “operation is prohibited”) as the unskippable crap plods along on-screen.

Here’s a closer look at the footage that plays at the beginning of a Planet Earth disc, deemed so important that it literally cannot be missed.

0:00–0:14 — Above, you see a video capture from the moment I begin playback on my PS3 to the moment where control is restored. The first 14 seconds or so are blackness, punctuated by the brief appearance of the PS3’s swirly “loading” icon in the upper-right. Even though I know what’s next, my response to the swirly thing is so conditioned that a part of my brain always lights up like, “Oh boy! Here comes fun!”

0:14–0:27 — But it’s not fun. It’s boilerplate finger-wagging from the scolds at the FBI. Irony alert! If you want to skip the FBI piracy warnings on a DVD, the most reliable technique is to pirate the disc. See, when you burn a copy of a DVD on your computer, it’s a trifle to remove the UOP restrictions. So when you play back the pirated disc, you can skip ahead to your heart’s content. Of course, if you could skip the FBI warning in the first place, there would be less incentive to pirate the disc. That concludes today’s irony alert.¹

Unfortunately, copying technology for Blu-Ray discs isn’t widely available yet. But let the FBI rest assured that once it becomes practical to do so, I plan to pirate the bejesus out of these discs. I’ll wallpaper my kitchen with, print my Christmas cards on, and swim in a bathtub full of pirated Planet Earth Blu-Rays. Purely out of spite.

0:27–0:50 — This 23-second—23-second!—motion logo for publisher “2 entertain” is an ego trip on par with the old “genius at work” Stephen J. Cannell Productions tag. At least Stephen got the job done in 11 seconds. That’s just not enough time for “2 entertain” (clever name, by the way, the numeral “2” really adds a lot) to admire itself. The self-love is in evidence on the corporate website, as well:

Now in our third year, many in the industry would agree that we have become the most exciting and successful new company in our sector.

Here’s the picture they use to illustrate their crackling excitement.

0:51–1:03 — I sort of feel sorry for this BBC logo. British people apparently expect us to be impressed that they can do HD. They’re all, “Watch, we can do ice rays! And then fire! And then ice again—oop, time to go.” Look, Beeb, we even have Wheel of Fortune in high-def now. It’s just not that…aw, I don’t have the heart. Yeah, you’re super, BBC. Real super.

1:03–1:31 — You may think that this sunrise over Earth is actually quite beautiful. And it is. Trouble is, this sunrise is at the beginning of every episode of Planet Earth. Same footage, same orchestral swell, everything. Obviously, I am going to watch one of those episodes when I put the disc in. That’s the whole point. So why make me sit through it twice?

And finally, there’s four seconds of elephants. A plea to the entertainment industry: Never use 90 seconds of warnings and “branding” where four seconds of elephants will do.