Bad news is that pirates are always going to find away around any type of copy protection you put on your finished DVD.

If you at least want some protection to deter less determined pirates, Sony's DVD Architect has copy-protection settings built in. "Disc copyrighted," "Copy generations," "CSS," and "Macrovision." That's the best I've heard of for burning your own stuff but there's probably something better.

that is helpfull at list to give them some work too.
thanks

simplo

One of the best ways is to (a) Copyright it (b) Make it cheap enough that there is no market for pirated versions.

Story 1 - VHS was pirated all the time in the past. They put fancy anti-piracy stuff on the tapes. Pirates and vHS companies found ways around. Tapes were often $90. Then Batman came out priced to sell at $20. They flew off the shelves and I don't believe anybody bothered to pirate it. I don't think it needed anti-piracy software.

Story 2 - The Star Wars trilogy was not available on DVD. It was the most pirated DVD out there because some folks took the Laserdisk and got it onto DVDs. Then when the disks were finally released on DVD at a reasonable price the sales went through the roof and I believe the market for the pirate disks dried up instantly.

The point is most people want to buy legal disks/music downloads/etc but will do whatever it takes when they feel they can't get the product they want at a reasonable price (or at all).

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA

Indeed: I had a copy of the original 'Star Wars' from laserdisk, only because Lucas wouldn't sell me a DVD... once they were released I bought a set. I'm still waiting for 'Howard the Duck' :).

As for software, CSS and Macrovision are trivially removed, so it's essentially impossible to stop anyone from ripping DVDs without harming your customers by adding bad sectors and other junk that will significantly increase the odds of poor playback for people who've paid for the disks. Maybe CSS will stop your grandmother copying it, but it won't stop your eight-year-old son.