All the members of The Producers Guild of America have to sign a legally binding agreement before they can receive screeners of movies and TV shows. By signing the agreement, I promise to never to sell, copy, loan or giveaway the DVDs and tapes to anyond, and:
If at some point following the relevant awards season I wish to dispose of some or all of the material I have received, I agree to do so by destroying the cassettte or DVD in a manner that prevents its recovery and reuse by any third party. I agree that any violation of this agreement may constitute grounds for discipline, including censure, suspension, or expulsion from the Producers Guild of America and may also result in civil and criminal penalties and that the owners of the rights in the works I recevie are third party beneficiaries of this agreement with the rights to enforce it.
As I menti0ned a while back, my office is already swamped with Emmy screeners. So…anybody got any tips on simple and effective ways to destroy the DVDs I don’t want to keep?
Target practice? Someone needs to come up with a clay pigeon catapult adapted to CD/DVDs.
Otherwise I would go with sledgehammering. Get one or two old sheets. Put the DVDs in reasonable size piles. Either fold one half of the sheet over the other or put a second sheet on top. Smash each pile. Pick up the edges of the sheet(s) and throw away.
This is how we used to get rid of hard drives that had to disappear. The giant magnets for erasing VHS are sorely missed.
Yeah, give them to my three year old. They’ll be destroyed in less than 5 mins.
Toaster? C’mon. You know you want a new one anyway. Grab the old four-slice, two DVD’s each slot, recorded side to the burners, set to dark, pop ’em up when they start to smell scary. Makes eight of ’em toast at a time.
Put them in a microwave oven, put it on the highest power setting and give them a couple of minutes cook time. The reflective layer shatters. I saw this done on Tech TV and used it on a CD-R and it worked perfectly.
Under the codename ‘Curveball,’ feed the Bush Administration faulty intelligence stating you’ve received ‘slam dunk’ evidence that the Producers Guild–which obviously hates freedom–is turning Fahrenheit 9/11 into a James-Bond type franchise. Do they want the smoking gun to be a blockbuster? They’ll pretend to believe you, sparking a $300 billion dollar initiative to save your DVD at the cost of tens of thousands of lives, but due to a naive ideological refusal to actually plan the initiative in any meaningful sense, they’ll utterly destroy your entire collection of DVDs.
Simpler than any wacky microwave theory.
Send ’em to the MPAA and let *them* worry about disposal. They’re the ones concerned about it, after all.
This is a fairly simple method: Cut it in half with a pair of scissors. If people can restore the disc, they deserve to keep it.
Yeah, send it to the MPAA COD and let them keep them.
What could they do?
I have a pile on my desk that eats papers, books and software. DVDs should be no problem.
Did you know you can buy DVD shredders?
Since you have so many and it’s a regular problem.
My personal favorite for maximum personal risk (as seen on Mythbusters): affix the disc to an electric drill and turn in on. It should fly apart and shatter, sending high-velocity shrapnel everywhere.
(I wonder why they always have that ‘don’t try this at home’ disclaimer, anyway?)
I second the vote for DVD shredders. Some office shredders do CDs and DVDs too (should say so on the box).
You could also use a drill press to put holes in them.
Or you can do what my brother does: Hold the disc in one hand, and punch it. This method is messy, so do it somewhere easy to sweep. 🙂
I’ll second the microwave suggestion, especially if you know someone who makes jewelry and will give the pieces a new home, like this.
How about return to sender to the prod. co’s?
COD of course.
Microwave could be dangerous same with the toaster. DVD shredder would be the best.
Of course you could just run over then with your car it would do the same thing.
Lee, just send ’em to “Dave’s DVD Destroyer Service.” I’ll… I mean, they’ll dispose of them appropriately.