RT and AdblockUntil I had a sort of financial disaster last year and cut expenses ("ruthless triage" is a phrase that comes to mind), I'd been sponsoring RT for years. Probably since I signed up, or shortly thereafter. Today I jumped on and saw a new Animated Adventures. Yay! But when I tried to watch it I saw a message I'd never seen before. It said that they wanted to play a 30 second ad but I have an ad blocker so instead they're going to play nothing for 90 seconds.

Now, I know I wouldn't have even payed attention to the ad. Depending on how obnoxious I found it in the first second or so, I might have even shut off my speakers until it was over. I've done that before....

RT and AdblockUntil I had a sort of financial disaster last year and cut expenses ("ruthless triage" is a phrase that comes to mind), I'd been sponsoring RT for years. Probably since I signed up, or shortly thereafter. Today I jumped on and saw a new Animated Adventures. Yay! But when I tried to watch it I saw a message I'd never seen before. It said that they wanted to play a 30 second ad but I have an ad blocker so instead they're going to play nothing for 90 seconds.

Now, I know I wouldn't have even payed attention to the ad. Depending on how obnoxious I found it in the first second or so, I might have even shut off my speakers until it was over. I've done that before. But I also know they've got the right to try to protect their revenue streams in much the same way game publishers use DRM. (Hint: it doesn't work)

That brings me to the crux. When a company has a product that I want and there are some idiotic strings attached to it (like DRM with a game, or unskippable previews on a DVD, or ads on a website) I first try something that is completely legal to combat it. I'll buy a digital copy from a service that doesn't allow DRM (like GOG.com). I'll watch DVDs in VLC, which conveniently loads the menu first, regardless of what previews and stuff the disc says is supposed to play. I use Adblock.

Step two is usually something in the legal grey area. I'll crack a game that I actually own to remove a CD check, for example. I still play the PC version of Final Fantasy VII. My hard drive is larger and faster than it was in 1998 and so it's actually a performance boost to copy the movies off the CD, and at the point there's no reason to have a CD check any more. Or maybe I'll rip a DVD I own to my laptop so that I can take it on vacation and not lug around a stack of movies. Ditto for CDs, but everybody does that. There isn't really a step two with websites, which leads me to...

Step three is abstinence. I stopped playing Diablo 3 when I got locked out because of real money auction house maintenance, which I've never used. Even before the release disaster, I wasn't planning on buying SimCity because of the always-on requirement. I have The Big List of 3rd Party DRM on Steam bookmarked and I consult it before making purchasing decisions. As an aside, yes I know Steam is basically DRM. But I can put it into offline mode and take my laptop to northern New Hampshire for a week where there's no cell service or internet and still play my games (not Diablo 3, obviously).

The point of this is not to argue. I don't particularly care if anyone else agrees with my opinions or my conclusions or my attitudes or my reactions. I'm not about to demand that the powers that be make sweeping changes to their business plan to accomodate my idiosyncrasies. This is not an open letter to the Rooster Teeth staff or a condemnation of Blip.tv or whatever else. This is simply an explanation for those few of you who still pay attention to my sometimes-happy corner of the internet.

RT has been sort of a middle of the road site for me for a while. I'd check it once in a while if I had nothing else to do. 90 seconds of silence as a tantrum over my ad blocker is enough to start avoiding it, though. Starting with my expenses and expanding to the rest of my life, the ruthless triage has now reached my bookmarks and roosterteeth.com/members is coming off the bar. Y'all take care, now.