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DVDs and public transit: Boycott drives people to ditch Big Tech to protest ICE (text.npr.org)
submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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In Portland, Ore., Brittany Trahan started buying DVDs rather than paying for Netflix and Apple TV, while Lisa Shannon has been relying on public transit instead of taking an Uber. And in McDonough, Ga., Brian Seymour II has been embracing the cold to shop locally instead of buying through Amazon.

They're among a growing number of Americans participating in a boycott this month, targeting tech companies who, they believe, are not doing enough to stand up against President Trump's aggressive immigration crackdown.

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[–] 58 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Odd choice just pirate and teach others how to aswell. Hurts in this case Netflix way more

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  • [–] 23 points 6 months ago (5 children)

    Pirating can be legally cut off. DVDs can't

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  • [–] 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

    With streaming companies owning the content, buying DVDs is just another way of financially supporting the same companies for worse quality.

    Even when one piracy platform is taken down, there are new ones launched in their place. Nothing guarantees that DVDs will continue to be produced in perpetuity, just as digital copies of video games are progressively becoming less and less prevalent.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    Yes but after a while you may start to yearn for some rarer things as well. There’s still lots of pre-lost media out there on rotting dvds waiting for custodianship that I haven’t been able to find online. There’s also some newer HD rereleases having single channel and lower quality or something, so finding the original dvds is better sometimes.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago

    Around here the used DVD market (thrift stores, used book stores) has been collapsing - prices down below $1 per disc, and everybody trying to get rid of their old stock. Selections are getting thin.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago* (5 children)

    How does one keep their system secure with pirating? A large mkv of a new movie seems like an effective container to deliver a payload.

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  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago*

    Carefully.

    Seriously, I don’t know of any/many issues caused by downloading and playing a legitimate video file (MP4/MKV/AVI).

    I feel like, if there are, those are being saved for a nation state level attack and not Fred downloading Shrek 2 questionably.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago

    This would only work if the supposed payload targeted a vulnerability in a media player. I might be wrong but I've never heard of one such vulnerability. And since there are so many different media players out there, such attack would not compromise as many people that other more efficient attack vectors could

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    So long as you are careful about file formats you shouldn't have any issues, but there are a decent amount of measures you can take.

    1. Do all your downloads inside a VM that is sandboxed away from your main system, and then monitor the system processes when you run the file. 1.1 if you really want to isolate it watch things on that VM, but that's a bit of a pain
    2. Have your download system on a vlan that isolates it from the rest of your network.
    3. Only download from well trusted communities and make sure to verify checksums.
    4. With a little bit of time to kill you can learn how to run a sandboxed video player on Linux or could go the extra mile and run a system like nixos which is isolated by design

    It doesn't have to do with device security, but you should only do downloads over a VPN with a kill switch enabled to stop your ISP from sending you a cease and desist letter. Keep in mind that you are just trading your ISP for your VPN server when you do that though, so you may want to pick one that has been proven to not record logs, I use PIA for that reason, but I have also heard that mullvad also got subpoenad and demonstrated that they didn't hold logs.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago* (2 children)

    Is TOR a practical alternative for VPN? never tried it, but it seems tempting...

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago

    I wouldn't consider it so. Imo it has a different intended use case.

    Similar to a a VPN's server, if a TOR exit node is compromised, so is your traffic.

    However, TOR is significantly slower than just torrenting over a VPN. It speed loss could make a 15min download take 6-8hours. For a movie that could be a few gbs in size it would take even longer.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

    In theory, sure. In practice, we (reading code/Linux news) don't see much of that. (Edit to clarify, I'm too lazy to pirate movies, so I'm not a first party source.)

    Don't run the video player with administration credentials, and keep the video player up to date and it's likely to be fine.

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