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Comment by mystifyingpoi | Hacker News Reader

What is "content"? I recently tried to use AppleTV Android app to play something and then use screen recorder app to record the phone screen. The recorder app was able to see the menus and even subtitles, but not the movie itself (black screen). Is the screen of my phone "mine"? Or does the manufacturer decide how can I use it?

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The screen is yours, the content displayed is not. Same reason you can "buy" a movie, game, audio, ebook and have it disappear overnight. Same reason your security camera, car, oven may suddenly cease to work if the company shuts down their servers. Do we support it? You do because you paid for it.

When I try to play something on youtube that has the DRM bit turned on (or anything on netflix), my whole entire screen turns off. Not only can I not see the content, I also can't use half of my screen for other purposes while I play the content on the other half.

FWIW, I am no longer paying for netflix.

> The screen is yours, the content displayed is not.

Sure but traditionally this was a purely legal mechanism. There was no technological measure preventing you from copying a book, only a legal threat looming over _what_ you do with the copy.

Nowadays we have this very corporate-positive situation where copyright holders have their cake by embedding DRM and eat it too by leveraging the DMCA to prevent DRM circumventions. So you can be screwed even if you only want to take private screenshots, make backups, or exercise fair use.

Creative work, i.e. intellectual property. Much can be said about the state of copyright law in 2025, but the basic idea that you own what you create is the fundamental reason we (able to) prosper.

I'm thinking of the Youtube videos as content.

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