"That DVD you bought? The one from a different region? It won't play and the reason it won't play is because of DRM. You think you can just put it in your laptop and use VLC, but you forget that your laptop DVD drive is probably region-locked in firmware, so although yes VLC ignores region coding the drive doesn't, and will enforce the region coding and refuse to play your DVD. I can fix it for you. Here's the list of stuff we need to do:
1) Find out the drive name and model number.
2) Find and download a firmware file for that drive.
3) Patch the firmware to turn it either into RPC1 or into auto-restarting RPC2.
4) Flash the file.
5) Carefully never ever use certain software and always cancel out of certain dialog boxes.
All this just because rights-holders want to stop you buying a new DVD from outside your region."
The amount of people buying off-region DVDs is awfully low. There are a thousand betters reasons to reject DRM such as not owning your product anymore ("That iTunes music ? Yeah, they can revoke your access at any time.").
The ability to do something does not hold any weight with the people you're trying to convince.
"Oh sure, Apple can revoke my access time, but they never would!"
It's the same thing as "Oh I'm sure the government COULD access all my data, but why would they want to?"
Region-locking affects more people than you might think, just not with DVDs anymore. Most of the world using reddit/hackernews/the internet is constantly faced with the frustration of clicking on a youtube link and seeing the copyright notice that says the content is restricted to US-only.
The US gets that, too. We get it a bit less because so much is produced here; but I've definitely had my share of "Sorry, the owner of this video has not made it available in your region" notices.
It would be nice if it told me which regions were allowed, so I knew which VPN I should use :P
1) Find out the drive name and model number. 2) Find and download a firmware file for that drive. 3) Patch the firmware to turn it either into RPC1 or into auto-restarting RPC2. 4) Flash the file. 5) Carefully never ever use certain software and always cancel out of certain dialog boxes.
All this just because rights-holders want to stop you buying a new DVD from outside your region."