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Technical Information
Copy Protection and DVD
Copy Protection and DVD
The Short Answer
The short answer is that there is currently no way to protect a DVD from unauthorized duplication.
But Hollywood DVD's are copy protected, right?
Yes and no. Hollywood DVD's are protected by a technology called Content
Scrambling System (CSS), which restricts playback of the disc to authorized
devices. The CSS technology encrypts the contents of the disc so that unauthorized
devices will only receive scrambled data. To view the contents, the DVD player
must contain a decryption key, which the manufacturer has licensed from the DVD
Copy Control Association (DVD CCA). In order to produce encrypted DVDs, it is
necessary to obtain a CSS license, which is prohibitively expensive for most consumers.
However, it is and always has been possible to make an exact copy of any DVD,
encryption and all. A DVD, after all, contains digital data that can be read by
a computer, and information that can be read can be duplicated. In addition, CSS
was based on a rather weak encryption scheme, and was broken in 1999. While still
illegal, it is not difficult to obtain software that strips away the encryption
and extracts the original video from a DVD.
Hollywood DVDs also use two other methods to further restrict their use: region encoding
and Macrovision. Region encoding allows content providers to specify a geographical
region in which a DVD can be viewed. Discs encoded for North America (Region 1), for
example, cannot be viewed on DVD players in Europe (Region 2). Macrovision prevents
DVD video from being recorded on a VCR. Like CSS, both of these technologies have
been circumvented.
ProShow creates region-free DVDs and does not support Macrovision. For the technical
and economic reasons described above, virtually no consumer DVD authoring software
(including ProShow) supports CSS encryption.
So, I'm out of luck?
Not entirely. While it's true that there will always be those who do not respect
copyrights, most viewers do. If you add a copyright notice to your DVD, most viewers
will refrain from making unauthorized copies. In addition, ProShow Producer includes
the ability to watermark your images if you wish. Finally, it is worth noting that
DVD video uses a resolution that is suitable for viewing on a screen, but not on paper.
There is no way that anyone could produce a worthwhile print from the images on a DVD.
Need additional help? Contact Technical Support
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