Comments

John_Cline wrote on 3/10/2005, 3:39 PM
No, there is virtually no copy protection scheme yet that hasn't been cracked. Anyone with a DVD burner and some easy-to-find freeware can copy DVD's. There is NO copy protection scheme for DVD's that you produce yourself.

The major studios use Macrovision copy protection, but even that doesn't prevent someone from copying a disc, it just slows them down a little.

John
digigroup wrote on 3/10/2005, 6:51 PM
hi john,
i want to put microvision on my dvds too (just to protect from people who dont know about computer), is microvision available for home use? or just for those major studio films productions.
Spot|DSE wrote on 3/10/2005, 7:04 PM
Macrovision is available to anyone that uses a replicating service, but it can't be burned on home-burned/single burner systems. The cost of licensing is based on quantities replicated. It ain't cheap for small runs. (5000 disks or less)
PumiceT wrote on 3/10/2005, 8:45 PM
Basically, if you can copy major studio DVDs, how do you think you're going to protect your personal DVDs?

What's your situation? Are you putting out some material that would be useful to someone else to copy? Would someone potentially copy your discs and resell the copies?

Depending on your situation, there may be some alternative ways to protect your assets.
Visual "watermarks" are one way many people keep their material from being reused (television stations and many programs use them, you know, the ghosted logo in the corner of the screen).
If you don't want people making complete copies and selling them, well, there's not much you can do about that.
johnmeyer wrote on 3/10/2005, 10:58 PM
Copy protection is a complete waste of your time. Make your work valuable instead through packaging, support, ongoing customer relationships, etc.

You'll get more "copy protection" by purchasing a good inkjet labeler for your disks than you ever will by copy protecting the disk (which as Spot pointed out, cannot be technically done on an DVD-R or DVD+R disk -- only on professionally replicated disks). Most people place value on a disk that looks "pro" and they know their rip-off disks are only going to be labeled with a "Sharpie" pen or paper label.

Same goes for packaging. Spend the extra money for quality boxes, and put some decent artwork on them.