Indeed, in my original post I tried hard to stick to relaying the facts without too much editorializing, to let people make up their own minds as to the level of frustration what I describe evokes in them. But if I were to get to the point - I would express it in the words similar to yours - “what the actual fork?”

Here’s another mini-anecdote. On my iphone I have Amazon Prime app where it allows me to download episodes of Peppa Pig for my daughter to watch when we don’t have internet. Recently I wanted to cast these episodes on an AppleTV hooked up to a big TV in a hotel. It wouldn’t let me - because you are not allowed to use Screen Mirroring to show protected content, and AppleTV was connected to WiFi, but not internet - so it couldn’t verify licenses.

So bottom line - here I have content that I paid for, stored inside a protected from ground-up encrypted mainstream device, but I can’t play it on large TV in the same room, because “what if i somehow got around it being licensed!”.

All of this feels insane to me, especially being rather familia with constant slogans coming from Amazon and Apple about their customer-focused philosophies.