I think they put reasonable barriers to piracy. They are of course possible to circumvent, as every other barrier in existence, but you can also scan or make photocopies of a physical book. And this is actually a good thing. Mildly related: the other they I was watching something on Netflix on my phone and found something funny so I tried to take an screenshot to share with my friends, which quite frankly I think is fair use. It didn't work because it seems that although I paid for my phone, it's not really my phone.

To unlock that feature you have to buy a second phone.

> It didn't work because it seems that although I paid for my phone, it's not really my phone.

Root it.

Not an option.

Rooting the device voids the warranty.

It's not a reasonable thing to ask the average person.

> Rooting the device voids the warranty.

I’m pretty sure it would depend on the country you’re in . Even if that’s actually the case in the US

Even if it doesn’t void the warranty, it voids SafetyNet, so now Netflix and other apps might refuse to work.

And even if it didn’t, it increases the attack surface. Random apps can ask for root, and the average user won’t know what it means.

And even if you know the risks, now it’s much more of a hassle keeping your device up-to-date.

So yes, rooting is theoretically a solution, but it’s not practical in the least.

If Netflix refuses to offer their services on a device that you own, you're always free not to pay netflix and instead take your money and attention elsewhere.

Just remember that that doesn't mean piracy.

If there's no ethical company left to purchase goods from, then there's no ethical issue with piracy.

And that's the problem with "owning your device entirely".

Most people are not capable (or willing) to own their device to its full extent and take responsibility for it.

The options are not limited to "A sanctified centralized authority controls and limits all my devices" and "I need to recompile the kernel by hand".

For most people "owning their devices" means being allowed to meaningfully change OS (or even just modify it) without losing major functionalities.

Is there a root method that falsely reports that SafetyNet is still intact?

It doesn't if you're using Magisk - which is the case 99% of the time. Magisk has been updated and passes SafetyNet under Android 12 too - no other means of rooting a modern phone is safe anyway.

So now you need to stay up-to-date with the newest advances in rooting (which I clearly wasn't).

It's nice if this is a hobby (and I have rooted my phones in the past), but for the average user (even the average technical user) who just wants to get on with their day without becoming an expert in rooting, it's a complete no-go.

Importantly, it's a very poor substitute for regulations mandating that manufacturers offer us these options without having to go through back doors. I believe that any energy spent on technical workarounds to manufacturer locks is better spent on political activism to enable true device ownership through regulation.

Not having a warranty is, frankly, also a part of it being really your phone.

"I want to be allowed to do whatever I want, but if I do something I regret, I get a refund" is not a coherent position to take.

Bullshit, warranties is the way to keep manufacturers honest : if it only has minimum legal manufacturer warranty, you know it's crap.

And it should be illegal to void warranty for rooting.

My understanding is that (precedent aside) in the US the law clearly says that the manufacturer has to prove that you managed the product under warranty.

That is those "warranty void" stickers are not enforceable (under that specific law) by themselves, they need to argue that the user actually damaged the product.

How do you know the phone doesn't have multiple levels of root and you're only breaking the topmost one?

I was thinking of doing that but then I don't think you can use netflix at all or if you make your way around that your banking app might not work etc

Not practical if you want to use the phone for payments and identity services because a lot of those will refuse to work on a rooted device.

Hardware remote attestation will end that soon. Every app will refuse to run on modified devices and it will be impossible to circumvent because it's in hardware.

Those user hostile features are what drive me to piracy. No way I'll pay money to have the privilege of installing spyware just so I can stream low-quality video to whatever device the provider deems worthy at that particular moment.

I'll just go on 1337x and in 2 minutes I have an high quality mkv that I can play anywhere I want. I'd happily pay 5-10$ a pop for this, and for indie movies I do make the effort of seeing if there's a way of paying to watch it somewhere, even if I just pay and don't watch it there, and watch the pirated rip anyway.

What a way to justify a crime. "I don't like how they act, so I don't comply with their rules".

You pirate because you have no respect for law, because you are a entitled child or because you don't have enough money. Piracy isn't plain theft, but it's consuming a service without paying for it to its legimate owners. It's close, isn't it?

Would you sneak into a amusement park? Not pay for dinner if you found it not to your liking or if the brand don't meet your standards?

The reason you think piracy is ok is because you don't associate the crime with the victim.

No, it isn't close. The reason none of those things are comparable is because the service provider has lost something in the transaction in your example. Sneaking into an amusement park is theft of services, not paying for dinner after you consumed it is plain old theft. In both of those cases, the seller's resources were consumed. They have lost resources or effort.

With digital items it isn't like that. I can make infinite copies at no harm, real or imagined, to the seller. What might make this more clear is the distinction between downloading a movie illicitly versus watching a friend's legit purchased copy with them. In both of these cases, the maker of the content was not compensated for a watch.

The reason I think piracy (defined as personal copyright infringement) is okay is because:

1. It is generally a victimless "crime" (and even this is a misnomer, the act of downloading a movie is a civil, not criminal matter. It has more in common with driving over the speed limit than it does stealing.), and as so is morally neutral.

2. Statistics show that habitual pirates tend to be habitual purchasers as well, further complicating any concept of harm.

3. Copyright is a government granted monopoly, not some natural right, and its continued abuse and deadweight on our culture is not something that should be respected.

4. Even if the previous 3 points were all invalid, why should I have any respect for an entity that has none for me? Slavish adherence to the law is mere obedience, it is not noble or useful on its own.

You realize the endgame for the MPAA is for all TVs to have mandatory cameras with face id to identify the people watching and automatically charge each person per view.

There already are unenforced (currently unenforceable) maximums on the number of friends you are allowed to enjoy something together with. Beyond that you would need a broadcast license.

There is no limit for the greed of the copyright cartel.

The reason people think piracy is ok is because there is no victim being deprived of property.

But more than that, you're not even technically correct. piracy is copyright infringement, which is not criminal.

> The reason you think piracy is ok is because you don't associate the crime with the victim.

piracy is a victimless crime. you were not going to buy the license anyway, so its not a lost digital sale for the creator. additionally digital copies cost exactly nothing to make so nobody lost anything in the pirated transaction.

I would just as easily pirate movies as much as I would buy an xbox controller off amazon, replace it with a broken controller, and send it back saying it doesn't work.

These massive companies don't owe you anything. These companies exist purely to extract as much wealth out of you as possible while convincing you that they're the only ones that can provide that service.

It's so convenient that I can pirate videogames, movies, tv shows. These companies want you to keep paying for this mass produced content controlled and influenced by money and what "sells" based on algorithms, social media influence... These companies control and influence you (read: consumers/society) more than we think.

I'd rather see these companies go bankrupt and blown up into a billion different smaller companies than have massive conglomerates control and influence what we see.

If we were to see more originality in the higher-value sections of markets (think indie developers/filmmakers vs companies like EA, TenCent, etc.), then I'd probably pirate less things.

The hyper-optimization of art and culture by these massive companies designed solely to make profit (and the population willing to throw their cash at it for toys, theme park rides, etc.) is morally repugnant to me.

The reason you think that it is a crime is that you associate legality with morality. However there are deeply cruel and immoral things occurring entirely within the established "system" (as there have been all throughout human history), so that's a very poor compass indeed.

Wow, someone copied something. Better send out the battleships to blockade their country and bring them to their knees for this unspeakable crime against humanity.

You're damn right I have no respect for copyright law. I want to see it abolished. As far as I'm concerned, copyright infringement is civil disobedience and a moral imperative. These monopolists don't have any respect for our rights either: they systematically rob us of our fair use and public domain rights. So why should anyone give a shit about some monopolist's imaginary property?

> but it's consuming a service without paying for it to its legimate owners

The legitimate owners of information are all of us. Copyright is a special monopoly only granted to authors only because it was thought to benefit society as a whole.

I was shocked to find that this wouldn't even work on my desktop! You have to go to the browser settings and turn off hardware acceleration. If you rent an HD movie from Prime Video, you get a notice saying that your screen has to be compliant with some specific standard, and part of the standard is essentially baked-in DRM that prevents taking screenshots of the content. The device belongs to me, the content was streamed to me, the device has no business preventing me from taking a screenshot or recording video. Yet here we are, apparently DRM is baked into all of our screens now.

Just wait till they make impossible to take a photo with your phone of your desktop screen.

Like they already made it impossible to make color photocopies of some content? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation

"Why Rosyna Can't Take A Movie Screenshot" :

https://web.archive.org/web/20170617174641/https://www.alexr...

And that's why it's important to boycott devices and software that allow DRM : Intel and Ryzen AMD CPUs, Windows 11 (requires a DRM chip), maybe Chrome/ium if it doesn't allow to easily disable DRM support, Steam...

Boycotton all recent x86 CPUs is probably not reasonable for most people. More actionable is to make sure you control the software (most importantly, the OS) that runs on those CPUs so that their user-hostile features are not used for DRM.

You're right, not for most people. But we aren't most people here, and can stick with older AMD for desktops, as well as should be heavily investigating the alternatives like RISC-V (and also the "true" Linux, non-Android smartphone alternatives for somewhat related reasons).

That's why I encourage everyone with a desktop system to run their HDMI outputs through a capture card as well as the monitors.

You will own nothing and be happy.

It is baked into Windows since Vista. They had to add it in order to license HDMI and this has led to the need to digitally sign drivers - they had to be able to revoke your driver if it turns out that you were doing something the movie and record industry didn't want you to do.

> Yet here we are, apparently DRM is baked into all of our screens now.

This situation sucks. It's as if movie and tv studios (including Netflix, apparently) said "we want you to implement a bunch of intrusive, complicated, wasteful technology that will punish paying users while having little to no effect on pirates" and all the tech companies said "great idea, let's do it!"

I suppose the (self-correcting) endgame is when DRM makes paid media so inconvenient that it drives the masses to piracy.

It's already happening. You cannot get better than 720p on most services on linux, while pirated content is available in 4k

It is yourphone. As such, it has drm capable hardware, which let's you stream Netflix.

Think of the alternative: you don't have protection. Who would license their media to Netflix?

Who wouldn't license their media to Netflix in a world without DRM? What are they going to do? Make a $100 million dollar movie and then only release it in theaters, just out of spite? That'd be leaving a lot of money on the table.

Scanning and making copies of portions of a book used to be encouraged. In fact, it's how you collected information for book reports and research. It wasn't uncommon, for example, for me to print out entire journal articles or scan entire chapters at the University library. Now, they'd probably shoot my dog.

I tried prime video once and the way it locked down my computer to guarantee so-called "rights" was stupid. I tried Netflix, same thing. I'm slowly but surely trending back to unabashed piracy because it's the only way I can own anything anymore - and that's sad. I will happily spend hard earned money as long as I can own something. At the very least I'd happily donate to my local library if they didn't spend time enforcing the will of some faceless multinational publisher.

Shockingly, as I've gotten older I seem to own less and every year the apes we elect take more of my rights away.