DVD and CD piracy refers to the unauthorised duplication of copyrighted works, and is a massive problem in the industry today. The rights and wrongs are a hotly debated issue, and it concerns the rights of the customer to make copies of computer software, audio and video.

History of piracy
Piracy has existed since the introduction of technology. The music, movie, software and gaming industries been particular affected and are constantly introducing new copy protection mechanisms to try to prevent it. Companies have tried spoiler signals, codes from user manuals, dongles, bespoke specific hardware, gadgets, serial numbers, phone activation codes, macrovision, RCE and Internet product activation to name a few of the copy protection mechanisms.

The reasons DVD piracy continues to be a threat
From a technical point of view, it may be considered impossible to prevent people from making copies of CDs and DVDs. This is because the CD and DVD player needs to be able to read the media in order to display it correctly , in the right format, to humans. Logically, it should then be possible for the player to read the media and make an exact copy of the same on another disc or hard disk.

Protection from DVD piracy
Copy protection measures are still in place. One method is to encrypt the data such that it is unique for each user’s computer and the decryption system is tamper resistant.

Producers of movies and music use systems and methods like Content Scrambling Systems (CSS), which uses an encrypted key, to make copying difficult. While this is totally legal, today software like DeCSS and other such software-based solutions have arrived and provide access to encryption keys and methods.

The struggle between piracy and copy protection will always continue, and the debate as to whether it is legal to make backup copies of your movies and DVD's continues. In the meantime it is perfectly possible to purchase software such as Nero, Copy2DVD and DVDShrink to make it easier for you to copy DVD's and CD's.

BB-Shopping.com does not advocate the use of blank CD and DVD media for piracy.