I bought a film on a DVD (legally, at least where I live). The film, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, is about freedom of speech and politics limiting it. I won’t write about it now, since the technology controlling such things is interesting enough for a blog post (or more).
When using a Gentoo GNU/Linux workstation, with nearly only free software (but a non-free graphics card driver did not affect this situation in a visible way), there was no problem with this technology. Although in the US it would be possibly illegal to watch an encrypted DVD with free software, it is legal to use such software in Poland. Gentoo is an American GNU/Linux distribution, but being a source-based distribution, it does not provide software violating US patents or the DMCA (known for prohibiting circumventing DRMs like the one based on DVD encryption). The user may compile it themselves.
Several days later I wanted to watch the movie again. For this I used my laptop which has Debian GNU/Linux installed. Since Debian is a binary distribution, all compiled code is shared by it. Therefore US law (also allowing software patents) limits software available in such distributions everywhere.
Clearly this did not work in the intended way. After installing necessary software from a repository outside US, it also did not work. I do not remember if on this laptop DVD movies could be watched with Gentoo (Update: now I know that with Gentoo it also does not work, next time I will buy DVD hardware not made by Matshita). The messages from the kernel log suggest that the drive’s firmware prohibits using DVD from this region (a DVD from EU used in EU in a laptop bought in EU).
There are two solutions. Use a different computer with software which cannot be used in the US, or avoid DVDs. Or (unless the Spanish Inquisition will do it sooner), tell others how DVDs are designed to limit freedom of their users.
