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| - A programming flag used to disable one or more functions of a media player, such as Stop, Menu, and Chapter Skip. On a compliant player, it forces the viewer to wait as certain material plays before the main menu becomes available. Originally, this was used to require the viewer to see the copyright warning, but it has since been regularly abused to make advertising and promotional material unskippable. The illogic of this practice is that the people who will see this stuff obviously own the DVD, and the people who pirate the video via the internet won't get the warning or ads.
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| abstract
| - A programming flag used to disable one or more functions of a media player, such as Stop, Menu, and Chapter Skip. On a compliant player, it forces the viewer to wait as certain material plays before the main menu becomes available. Originally, this was used to require the viewer to see the copyright warning, but it has since been regularly abused to make advertising and promotional material unskippable. The illogic of this practice is that the people who will see this stuff obviously own the DVD, and the people who pirate the video via the internet won't get the warning or ads. The formation of the User Operation Prohibit Flag was arguably set in motion during the VHS generation, where viewers could skip the trailers running before the feature presentation by fast-forwarding through them. The leap to DVD and Blu-Ray (and the rise in digital distribution and piracy) forced production companies to institute DRM that holds the viewer's attention while it shows promos for their latest works - this can range from a single trailer to several minutes worth of commercials and advertisements for unrelated media. This DRM fills many people with a vast, seething hatred. People who own DVD editing software like Hand Brake may even be tempted to copy it purely to get a version without all that stuff. This can be universally bypassed by pressing Stop twice, and then play, to skip directly to the core feature of the DVD (until they close that loophole too). On some players, hitting "menu" works — sometimes. Some players will also hiccup if you try speeding up the playback past the tolerance point; dumping you at the menu. Of course, just as many will hiccup and go back to the beginning. Unsurprisingly, the User Operation Prohibit Flag is slowly creeping its way into online distribution services as well. In 2006, Amazon's Unbox service was released with a service agreement that barred the customer from turning off their software, auto-updates without their consent and puts commercials and trailers on the user's computer without their permission. Examples of User Operation Prohibit Flag include:
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![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)