The content industry wonders why they can't stop piracy. Maybe they could start by providing a product that's as good as what the pirates get.
We got a portable DVD player to add to our arsenal of distractions for our toddlers on long road trips. One of the DVDs we purchased—an Elmo sing-along—prohibits the viewer from skipping the five-minute donation plea that plays before the menu. This is especially frustrating because the kids will inevitably bump something requiring playback to be restarted (even with the button lock enabled, the disc door can still be opened) at least once an hour.
Whoever made the decision to set the "unskippable" flag on that track must have absolutely no familiarity with their customer base. For the vast majority of parents, I'm sure the effect is exactly the opposite of what they intended: if I was ever considering donating to Sesame Workshop, I'm certainly not anymore.
You paid for HD. You got SD.
Of course, you could go pirate a full HD copy of the movie and play it back anywhere. The effectiveness of these inconveniences is overwhelming.
(1) I'm not positive it was even possible to redeem an HD rental in HD. I don't know anyone that didn't get forced to play in SD.
The intel video driver on Linux is open-source. I am sure there would be forks disabling this functionality in case it would be implemented. I find it outrageous that there's software that disables a functionality like screenshot taking, that's malware to me. I own that framebuffer, not intel.
And it's even more sad that the most computer illiterate, "honest" people are the most vulnerable to this strategy. People that want an honest way to watch movies have the most problems watching them.