Safeguarding Your Creative Work

All you need to do is simply type "Copy DVD" into a Google search to see how easy it would be for anyone to create copies - legal or illegal - of any DVD (or CD) on the market today. It's a point of much debate for both Hollywood studios and independent content creators. The idea behind the technology of copy protection is to simply prevent someone from having what they did not purchase. More importantly, the goal is to prevent loss of profits that occur as unauthorized copies are purchased or downloaded. Clearly, no Hollywood studio is afraid of there being too many copies of their product in circulation - thus, the driving force is money.

So how do you go about copy-protecting your work on a DVD or CD? Macrovision is the standard for DVD Video, but there are two issues you may want to consider. First, you cannot use Macrovision protection on writable media (DVD+/-R/RW, CD-R/RW). It is only available on replicated discs - those made typically in the 1,000s by a factory manufacturing process. This is because there are very few similarities in the actual media used in your computer's DVD burner and the media the replicator uses. The second - and perhaps more important issue - is that Macrovision is easily defeated (again, simply do a Google search and you will find many ways to do this). This is Hollywood's standard protection and consumers can toss it aside. The rule that applies here is this: if you can play it in your player, then you can copy it. When you play the disc, the player is handling the decryption of the Macrovision. When you put 2 and 2 together, you can see why this method has been so easily defeated.

So again, what do you do? Macrovision doesn't work, so what else can you try? The answer is probably "nothing." As I stated above, writable media does not accept Macromedia protection. What would have been more accurate is to say "writable media does not accept ANY copy protection." If you are using a replicator to manufacture your discs, you can use a couple of options (including Macrovision) but I am going to recommend that you save your money and not spend a single dime on digital copy protection.

Let's all ask one more time - so what do you do?

Knowing that the odds are great that you will not be able to prevent unauthorized duplication, let's think of some alternatives to digital protection, and call it "insurance," or may "copy resistance." Start by writing some method of copyright agreement into your contracts and/or on the disc surface itself, such as "Copyright 2006 My Fun Production Company. All rights reserved. Unauthorized duplication is a violation of Federal law. Violators will be prosecuted." While your average software or movie pirate is going to be unimpressed, your typical customer might think twice. Most people will not find the risk worthwhile, knowing that it would be easier for a smaller production company to become wary of the duplication efforts than that distant Hollywood studio. Hollywood doesn't waste much money prosecuting individual consumers duplicating their DVDs, but by stating this upfront you may have been able to imply that you might find it worthwhile - after all, a single duplication may represent a significant percentage of the work you earned in the first place.

Another option is to just price your business around the original work, and consider any additional discs that you may sell as icing on the cake. Then, you can price additional copies either at or just barely above your costs of duplication. The success rate here assumes that you are going to be able to duplicate the discs for the client at a much lower cost than they would incur by doing it themselves. You are able to get bulk rates on media and cases that your customer likely cannot get by purchasing a 10 pack of DVD-R from the local store. If it costs you $0.35 per disc, $0.50 per case and around $1.20 for ink and paper usage on the disc and insert, then your material cost is only $2.00. If it takes you 15 minutes to burn, print and assemble this all, then figure 1/4 of your hourly rate (this kind of work can pull anywhere from $10/hour to $40/hour). So you're talking about no more than $4 to $12 dollars for an additional copy. Charge them about that much for duplicates and they won't think twice about copying it themselves.

The biggest success, however, may be in promoting your work itself. Make an attractive package inside and out, but make them stick on the outside. If they duplicate your disc, they will easily get the creativity that you put into the disc itself. More difficult for them will be copying the artwork that you assembled on the cover and the artwork for the disc (sidenote: if you are not doing printing on the disc and are instead using disc labels or no printing at all, WAKE UP!). Again, most pirates will either not care about the pretty packaging or will find a close-enough copy to do the insert and disc printing. We aren't dealing with pirates, though, and they probably don't care that much about the corporate video you produced or little Jimmy's bar mitzvah.

All you are trying to do is encourage the client to come back to you for additional copies. If you do good work and make it look very attractive, then you can justify higher costs of duplication for your clients. In fact, if you really worked hard and pulled off a great job, you probably earned a customer for life. Even if the client could assemble the parts and pieces for less money than paying you to press another copy, they may think twice if it means it won't look as good. That look is, after all, usually part of what they paid you for in the first place.