There's only one way to find out. Seems like a bit of manual labor if you've got a lot of DVDs to send out. But it does make some sense.

Rob Mack

I have heard of something along these lines before that involved deliberately damaging uselss data at the end of the disc. The rationale is that anything playing the disc won't have a problem until it gets to that damaged spot, and a DVD could easily be created that never even tries to play it. On the other hand, any attempt at copying the disc would force a read of the entire burned area and this would fail. Of course, it's easy enough to get around by using any of several easily available CD/DVD recovery programs that reads and reconstructs as much data as is possible to read, which would include the entire video.

But, if the disk can still be played then, by definition, the FILES can still be read. If they can't be read, then the disk won't play. Scratching the lead-out area, which is what I think is what this is about, might mess up a copying program that was just following the spiral out from the center, and reading bits and then copying them, but all you would have to do is copy all the FILES to your hard disk, and then make a copy of that.

If that's copy protection, then the word "weak" hardly seems "strong" enough to describe it.

It's certainly weak, but if they just have a program that says "copy DVD" and then the total of the data is not usable, it won't copy. So - people who don't know much about computers and just a have a program that duplicates a CD/DVD, will not be able to use it, and that could generate more sales.

It's just a simple thing that may help.

Dave

Actually, it would work. Sometimes.

This is a variation of yet another lame copy protection scheme tried by the record labels about three or four years ago. This is the one where there was a gap then some data that would confuse a PC CD ripper program into thinking the data is corrupt. In order for a PC to rip a CD or DVD, it has to read the data from the disc into a file structure on the PC. So, if you give it what looks like bad data, it would theoretically prevent copying on the PC. In the end, it was defeated with a Sharpie pen - making the posession of a Sharpie pen a felony under the DMCA.

It also damaged some CD drives on Macintosh PCs.

There is simply no way to stop copying, so get over it.

Steve Mann

I'm not going to stop copying/duplicating, I just want to make it inconvenient so that they order from me, rather than trying to figure out how to do it themselves.

I know that it can't/won't ever be stopped, but I'll do my bit to make it less easy.

Dave

All you will do is slow down the person who will make a copy anyway and piss off the users when your copy-protection attempts interfere with legitimate veiwers.

CSS and Macrovision are a joke - I don't know why Hollywood keeps putting money into them.

Steve Mann

Moms and dads around the world, have no idea how to do anything but click, and if they can just click and copy that's one thing, but if they have to know something, actually do something new, then they won't and they'll pay for it.

Such is how it is. You're telling me that this is not going to get any more business - I'd bet it will, but there will only be one way to find out.

Time will tell

I have a client down here who has exactly this problem, orders declining and Mums and Dads saying they're not going to buy a copy because they'll borrow a copy and make their own. One way to reduce this problem is to ONLY sell copies to those who pre-order, it just makes people think twice, if they can't get a 'copy' they can't go back latter to buy the legit item.

As to this copy protection scheme, yes I think it will work. This idea is to have a few mintues of black at the end of the program but prior to that a chapter marker that sends the player back to the main menu. DVD player will never see the trailing black. Creating CRC errors in the black portion will cause grief to anyone trying to copy the files.
Rather than use something as crude as scratching the disk an old drive could be modified to use the laser to burn out a radial section of the DVD.
In fact the damaged portion doesn't have to be at the end, one could create a section in the middle of the disk that was damaged but the player skipped, more accurate positioning of the laser would be needed of course.
Love to know how any of this could be circumvented with a Sharpie, that I think is an urban myth.

BTW, the older versions of DVDA did almost this, don't know if it was by design or not but it was damn hard to copy the files back off the DVD as they weren't compliant.

Bob.