When most people consume DVDs or Blue-ray discs, they get their little red Netflix envelope (or rent it from their local Blockbuster, assuming it's still in business), and they pop it in their dedicated hardware player, they hit a button or two on their remote, and then everything just works. How wonderful that would be.
I'm an atypical digital consumer. I speak Swedish to my young children, who are as bilingual as you can be at their age without being truly immersed in two languages. They hear English from everyone around them, except for me. To my aid, however, I have plenty of Swedish books, Skype video chat with their Swedish relatives, the occasional youtube clip, and mp3s and CDs with Swedish songs.
I also have an arsenal of Swedish DVDs. These are perfectly legal DVDs, purchased and paid for in Sweden, carefully gift wrapped, and delivered on the happy days when grandma and grandpa come and make up for their involuntary long absence from their grandkids' lives with gifts from the old country. The problem is that the minute I hit play on my DVD player, dozens of heavily armed FBI agents will knock down my door, drag me away, and lock me up. Could you spot the crime?
Ok, I may have exaggerated slightly. I probably would not get caught. But make no mistake about it -- in order for me to show my kids the Pippi movie, a crime has to be committed. The issue here is a wonderfully anti-consumer invention called the DVD region code. The short (and only slightly inaccurate) explanation is that the big Hollywood studios have managed to convince the hardware manufacturers that the players should only be allowed to play DVDs that are made in the same region as the DVD player. The US is in region 1, and Sweden is in region 2. When I pop the brand new just-out-of-the-shrinkwrap DVD into the player, the player tells me there is a region error, and refuses to play the disc. Many tears.
There are ways around this. Most hardware DVD players have a way to unlock the region enforcement, by going into secret setup menus (usually requires 10-20 key presses on the remote, and sometimes you can see the menus on the screen). You can usually google for "region free [DVD make and model]". However, some players don't have this available, and a troubling trend lately is that more and more manufacturers are caving into the pressure from Hollywood. Philips, in particular, used to be reliably pro-consumer, but reportedly several of their latest models can not be made region free. In particular, it is practically impossible to get portable DVD players that can be region-free. Sorry, kids, no Swedish on the plane or in the car.
Another way around it is to use a computer, and either play it there directly, or read the disc and re-encode the content into another format. The DVD player on your computer also has a region code, however, so you're going to run into the same problem. Most computer DVD players will let you change the region code a few times (because the manufacturers want to be able to sell the same unit to different countries, which is mostly not the case for hardware DVD players), but after a certain number of changes, you're locked into whatever region you selected last.
So let's say that I now have my computer set up so I can watch region 2 DVDs. I have now given up my ability to watch region 1 DVDs (which would then require another DVD player on the same computer, which is completely unnecessary from a technical point of view). My kids can now watch the movies on my computer, or if I am lucky enough to have a laptop or a computer that's close to my main TV, perhaps they could even watch it on the TV. Still no go for the portable device.
What if I try to read the disc and re-encode it to another format? This requires software that contains some form of the DeCSS computer code, which has been illegal to develop, obtain, use, or possess, according to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and other laws. The reason is that I have now not just unlocked the region code, but I now have a digital copy of the content of the disc, which is what Hollywood is truly afraid of, since I can now easily redistribute my copy. If I am going to break the law by taking my own DVD and re-encoding it, wouldn't it be easier to just download a copy with BitTorrent, and skip the purchasing process?
Just because you purchase a DVD, does not mean you actually own anything. You may not even have the right to play those DVDs. And if you try anyway, chances are you are breaking the law. Sure, those big FBI warnings in the beginning of the DVD (which you can't skip, because Hollywood tells the hardware manufacturers that they'll all be out of business if you could) are annoying and meaningless, but the real issue is that technology is being used against the consumer.
So next time you hear about content provider groups such as MPAA (Hollywood studios) and RIAA (record labels) complaining about people illegally downloading their products from the Internet, you may want to consider that at least some of that activity is due to the complete absence of a legal way to get to that material. Once again, the magic and flawless self-regulating market that we hear about, combined with politicians (from both parties) that get massive campaign contributions from these groups, have produced a system where the consumer gets the shaft.