Shoutbox

IANAL. I really hate that anagram and that it needs to be said. If you're taking legal advice from some anonymous geek on the internets you've got a serious problem.

@linx05 - Sorry, the other guys are right, you don't get much in the way of rights for your purchase. The trouble with the information age is that we spend too much time trying to treat non-scarce items as scarce ones. On some level this needs to happen though, because the people that put their effort into creative [but trivially duplicatable and distributable] works deserve to be paid for their investment. However, it's never going to feel natural unless artistic works are paid for by the state, and communism is too scary a word for most people, so lets not go there.

I think that while media distributors shouldn't have to guarantee that their media will be playable on all your devices, it should sure be legal for you to do so. You've paid the money, so they should have no motivation for stopping you from enjoying your media however you like. [Once it leaves your possession, on the internet or otherwise, feel free to be sued.] DVD purchases don't come with much in the way of an implied license, so the companies are free to lump whatever they like on you. What I think is neat is hardly canon though, the purpose of governments seems to be to remove rights you should be able to take for granted.

In short, "I've paid my money, what more do they want?" ... they want the rest of your money. They are businesses in a capitalist country, and this is just how the world works. Don't like it? Don't sell your soul.