I love it when DVD players force me to watch an unskippable anti-piracy threat that pirate copies always cut out.

It’s like they want me to pirate so I can avoid that garbage.

That's actually what stopped me from watching DVD's many years ago. I got so pissed off at all the unskippable garbage one day that I decided never to bother with DVD's again and haven't watched a single DVD movie since. I haven't pirated in a long time either, though, as I'm not a particularly heavy TV/movie watcher, so Netflix has been enough for me.

That always reminds me of the parody anti-VHS-piracy warning I remember from an old Australian skit show from the 80s.

"FBI Warning. If you suspect this video is not a legitimate copy, please call the number that is not appearing on your screen to report it."

This is how I feel every time I type "youtube-dl" in my terminal.

I ended up ripping my DVDs as the resulting MP4s were so much nicer than the original media. I'd rip it, put it on a tablet to watch on the airplane, then flush them out for the next set waiting at home for me. Zero interest in blu ray media.

> (It was this that taught me the heuristic that if you want a piece of consumer electronics with maximum format support and convenience features, it should be the cheapest and most Chinese version you can find; expensive e.g. Sony kit is heavily loaded with "protection" antifeatures.)

Earlier it was Japanese gear from the Akihabara that had that desirable property. Sony didn't participate because they had a conflict of interest: they had bought large film and music studios. Showing again that vertical integration is anti-consumer.

A difference is that while copyright restrictions as such are nearly universal worldwide, any further restrictions like those imposed by DMCA are USA-specific, so for decades there have been actions (and software tools) that were considered 'shady' in USA but legal and condoned elsewhere.

Region-lock is one thing. Selling "chipped" game consoles is another - while piracy is obviously a clear driver, as long as no pirated software exchanges hands, in many places outside USA it was legal to sell consoles with pre-installed mod-chips that can play "game backups", so major legitimate electronics stores did so.

> I wouldn't consider that "piracy", and certainly at the launch of the DVD player it wasn't considered piracy either.

It was definitely treated like piracy at the time (if for no good reason other than that DVD distributors demanded that it be treated like piracy.) At the consumer level it wasn't at all criminal, but pressure on retailers was pretty absolute. You had to shop at weird stores to get out of region DVDs or region-free players, or be in the know about how to hack mainstream models.

It was notable that amazon began to ship you DVDs from other regions the more international it became. It was the most mainstream place that I had seen that would do that.

Ignoring the region code didn't enable DVD piracy (like for example putting a modchip in your Playstation enabled game piracy while allowing you to play games from other regions) so the industry didn't have an argument that would aid them in making region code violation an actual crime.

> Ignoring the region code didn't enable DVD piracy (like for example putting a modchip in your Playstation enabled game piracy while allowing you to play games from other regions)

Only because the equivalent hack was unnecessary, right? A standard region locked DVD player can play a pirated disc by default, unlike a Playstation.

> and it was a breach of the DVD-CSS licensing agreement by the manufacturer

Hum, no. The poor manufacturer only created a test system, kept secure, with instructions for internal people only. It's hardly his fault that somebody leaked the instructions.