This. This is the reason for parent's complaint - it's legal, not technical. I have exactly the same experience of "30 mins hacking to make a new system play DVDs" - sure, it's a single package install usually, but which package? libdvdread? libdvdcss? Does the package include the library, or does it contain a script that downloads the library because of the legal issue? I know the answers to these questions on Debian because I use it so much (and it has a well updated wiki), but plonk me in front of a distro I've not used before, or with poor documentation for their particular idiosyncratic way of end-running the law, and suddenly it's a minefield.