Need help: create protected dvds

[mod]

Hi all. A friend of mine asked me this, but I haven't been able to find what he needed so here I am..
He's a photographer and he sells dvds with photos and videos of documentaries, weddings, baptisms, ecc. Last month he worked on a project in which were involved 30 families, but only a few bought the final dvd, and later he discovered that they had copied his work just to save €15.00 (the price of a single dvd he sells..).
He asked me if it's possible to protect the dvds just to make less easy to copy them, considered that a lot of ppl don't know how to remove protections..
Of course he knows that almost every protection can be removed, he's just looking for some product that makes it difficult.

Thanks all for the help.

[if this is the wrong place move the thread]

[Mtz]

Is not called "protection", but "hard to copy" and copying can be made only by experienced users. I know many of you will say: "hey I can copy it!", but this is for people which know only how to copy using simpe programs.

I'm not good in english, but the best method is "scratching" the DVD in some area.
I hope pictures will tell you more than words;
http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/8672/blankdvd8ni.th.jpg (http://img149.imageshack.us/my.php?image=blankdvd8ni.jpg)
http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/716/burneddvd6vs.th.jpg (http://img149.imageshack.us/my.php?image=burneddvd6vs.jpg)
Example:
http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/9672/scratched7yl.th.jpg (http://img149.imageshack.us/my.php?image=scratched7yl.jpg)

enjoy,
Mtz

[mod]

1st of all thanks for the reply :)
So you say that damaging "a little bit" the first sectors makes more difficult the copy, while the players are able to "skip" this kind of errors?
I hadn't googled for that..

EDIT: Googled. this (http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=946) seems to work with audio cds..

[setarip_old]

I recall reading somewhere, that a small notch at the outer edge of the disc will wreak havoc on straight disc copy attempts, while leaving the original DVD playable (as long as there's no critical data burned at the very end of the DVD)...

[mod]

Thanks for the help :)
I've googled but I haven't found any useful info about this protection mode.. ATM I'm going to take a look at the crappy softs I found here (http://www.cd-writer.com/cd_dvd_copy_protection.html).
I think I'll ask my friend to give me a copy (not a copied one) of a dvd and I'll try to make a notch; this will require a few days because we don't see very often.
Question: first sectors, last sectors, internal or external ledge? I'd go for last sectors but give me your ideas ppl, I don't want to damage ( :( ) a lot of discs..

Thanks!

[setarip_old]

a small notch at the outer edge...

[mod]

I just wanted to be sure :) .. Ok, I'll go for that.
If you have any other idea post it, and thanks!!

[jshumate]

Another option is that your friend can pay a professional DVD mastering plant to press his DVDs for him and pay a little extra for CSS to be turned on. It will encrypt the DVD and while most of us here know that CSS can easily be broken, how to do so is certainly unknown by most people. It won't be as cheap as if he burns the DVDs himself, but it might be an option.

If you want to go to http://www.dvdrhelp.com, there is a locked thread at the top of the DVD Authoring section of the forums that discusses how to copy protect DVDs, but I took a look at it quickly and didn't see anything that looked promising. You might want to take a closer look in case I missed something.

[mod]

Thanks for the link :)
I've seen only a few pages, but it seems that scratching the surface is the only way to do the job.. I don't know how much my friend can spend for a professional solution, but I don't think he will choose that, because dvds are only a little part of his sells. BTW I'll ask..
Terrible week at work, maybe next one I'll get a couple of dvds to test.
Any help still appreciated! :)

[siddharthagandhi]

This CSS method you are talking about.....DVD Decrypter can or cannot handle that?

[setarip_old]

CSS is the most basic (and likely oldest) copy protection that appears on virtually every commercial DVD - and most definitely can be handled by DVD Decrypter (as well as any other decrypter)...

[jshumate]

CSS certainly can be defeated, but most of the people I know have no idea how. Most of my friends and family have pretty weak PC skills and come to me all the time for help. When my brother, who is actually a fairly bright guy just not a PC expert, wants to copy an audio CD, he uses EZ CD Creator to copy it to MP3 first and then copy it back to CD audio. He has no clue at all on how to just copy from an audio CD to a blank CD, even though he has 2 DVD burner drives on his PC. Copying to MP3 first is the ONLY way he can do it. This is pretty typical of most people I know.

If the people who copied the original DVD were just using, say, Nero to copy an unprotected DVD, then using CSS would certainly defeat that. I know a lot of people who know that DVDs can be copied, they just have no idea at all how to do so.

[mod]

Sorry if my question seems stupid, but can't Nero copy CSS protected discs in any way? I've never used it, so I really don't know it..
This could be interesting, because in my experience a LOT of ppl uses Nero to make copies, so a simple CSS could be an "intermediate" solution..
Does anyone have an idea how much can cost (in your countries of course) such a service? Just to report to my friend.
Thanks! :)

[setarip_old]

can't Nero copy CSS protected discsAbsolutely not (They would have been put out of business)...

[feedback]

For on-demand or live, protect your content for secure distribution by applying DRM during encoding.

The above is from the page describing the freeware Windows Media Encoder 9 series. That's all I can offer you on the subject of protected content.
The link is Here. (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/encoder/features.aspx)

Regards,