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THE TRUTH ABOUT COPY PROTECTION AND DVD'S
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 short run productions
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.
Legacy DVD creates region-free DVD's and does not support Macrovision. For the technical and economic reasons described above, no tribute video authoring software 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 a copyright notice is added to the tribute DVD, most viewers will refrain from making unauthorized copies. In addition, Legacy DVD offers the option to watermark your tribute videos with your company name or logo at no extra charge. 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.