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Flying the Unfriendly Skies: United Pushes DRM

Mike Masnick of Techdirt reports on tech entrepreneur Brian Fitzpatrick’s close encounter with an unwanted DRM plug-in, courtesy of United Airlines. It seems the airline is beta-testing what it calls its “Personal Device Entertainment” option, by which passengers can use the in-flight Wi-Fi to view movies on their own devices. However, Fitzpatrick learned that the option requires the installation of both a DRM plug-in and Flash on personal computers, and the required plug-in is considered dangerous enough that Google Chrome does not support it for security reasons. Maybe Fitzpatrick should have just rented headphones and purchased an alcoholic beverage.

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