By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 26/08/2026The DVD consortium's hook IP had all kinds of bizarre licensing terms, like "region coding" - a requirement for DVD players to register the country in which they were sold and to check whether the DVDs you tried to play were from a compatible country. 49/ 21594
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 26/08/2026If not, the license terms required the DVD player to refuse to play your discs. Region coding is an "anti-feature," a technology developed at great expense *for which there is no market*. 50/ 324718
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 26/08/2026Sure, some DVD player owners who had never shopped abroad for a DVD didn't care about region coding. But for customers who bought a disc on vacation, or moved from one country to another: region coding was *terrible*. 51/ 41895
JauntyWunderKind @jauntywunderkind.bsky.social · 26/08/2026I wonder where anti-feature started getting used. I threw it down on a HN comment and was proud of myself for how i'd managed to Turn Undead, cast back the shambling monsters with it. 010
Short-haired Metalhead 🤘🏴☠️🦄📸🎺🎸📡🛰️🤿🇺🇦🇬🇱 @nico-f4ian.eurosky.social · 26/08/2026The DVD player I bought in the early 2000s (or was it the late 90s ?) could be "de-zoned", which was one of my criteria even though I probably never played a DVD from another zone. 050