In this thread, does DVDA burn sequentially?, there is a discussion of a cheap way to "copy protect" DVDs. The discussion ended with various comments about the ineffectiveness of copy protection, and how we all get ripped off by people making copies for their friends.
While there is no way to stop illegal copying, here is an idea that Sony could develop to help those of us in the event video business:
In a nutshell here it is: Provide a way to deliver unique, custom DVDs to each client.
All the pieces are in place, and this would require VERY LITTLE engineering effort. The basis for this idea is DVDA 3.0's "smart re-prepare" feature. For anyone that has used this, you know that certain kinds of menu changes can be made, and the resulting re-prepare takes less than ten seconds.
The idea for this feature would be to let the author define "fields" in the menu system, much like the fields in a mail merge. Then, during the prepare and burn stage, you would choose to do a batch smart-reprepare and burn. Each DVD would be unique and the menu on each DVD could now say "Mary Jane's personal DVD" or something similar. Obviously the client could still make copies, but the person receiving those copies would have a diminished viewing experience and would be reminded that they are watching a pirated copy.
Such a feature would also let you encourage purchasing because you could advertise that each DVD is created uniquely for each client.
If you ever wanted to track the source of copying, this would make it easy to track down who "leaked" out the first original.
The downside is that you would actually have to keep track of 100's of different, unique copies, and make sure the right disk got sent to each client.
While there is no way to stop illegal copying, here is an idea that Sony could develop to help those of us in the event video business:
In a nutshell here it is: Provide a way to deliver unique, custom DVDs to each client.
All the pieces are in place, and this would require VERY LITTLE engineering effort. The basis for this idea is DVDA 3.0's "smart re-prepare" feature. For anyone that has used this, you know that certain kinds of menu changes can be made, and the resulting re-prepare takes less than ten seconds.
The idea for this feature would be to let the author define "fields" in the menu system, much like the fields in a mail merge. Then, during the prepare and burn stage, you would choose to do a batch smart-reprepare and burn. Each DVD would be unique and the menu on each DVD could now say "Mary Jane's personal DVD" or something similar. Obviously the client could still make copies, but the person receiving those copies would have a diminished viewing experience and would be reminded that they are watching a pirated copy.
Such a feature would also let you encourage purchasing because you could advertise that each DVD is created uniquely for each client.
If you ever wanted to track the source of copying, this would make it easy to track down who "leaked" out the first original.
The downside is that you would actually have to keep track of 100's of different, unique copies, and make sure the right disk got sent to each client.