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by jiggawatts 2289 days ago
I'm not a lawyer, but this sounds like valid grounds for a class-action lawsuit.

Their advertising touts their 4K streaming and HDR quality, but then in practice they silently downgrade most non-television devices to HD resolutions and SDR. There's a footnote in some tech support article if you know where to look, that's it.

Under Australian consumer protection law, for example, this kind of deceptive or false advertising is flat-out illegal, and comes with eye-watering fines. Telecommunications companies have had huge fines for saying their Internet is "broadband" when it wasn't qualifying, for example.

If it wasn't such an enormous pain in the arse, I would love to get the ball rolling on a lawsuit, because flagrantly anti-consumer behaviour like this needs to stop.

Look at this this way: If you ask NetFlix about why they insist on DRM, particularly when most of their content is available in glorious 4K on certain pirate-themed bays, they mumble some excuse about contracts with their content providers. However, a huge chunk of their content is made by Netflix!

That's like a self-employed person saying "Sorry, this is company policy. My boss told me I have to do this nonsensical bad thing."

It's just absurd.

1 comments

There's a pandemic overwhelming the world right now.

You're going to sue Netflix for maybe $1 in damages per user?

Netflix gets to do whatever because there's a pandemic??