DVD & Optical Media Protection..

The copy protection originally designed to protect content on DVDs has been overcome some years ago. What other methods can you find today that movie studios are using to protect their content on DVDs or other optical media?

In the 1970's, the Data Encryption Standard (DES) was adopted as a protection system of digital media. This system worked for the time being but soon became obsolete because new technology made hacking much more feasible. In 2002, a new system called Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) was adopted. DES and AES "have been subjected to both professional analysis and amateur experimentation, and no serious deficiencies have been discovered" . Today, there are many more systems that are being used to protect content on DVD's and other optical media. The following list comes from PC Tech Guide (link below) :

• Analogue Protection System (APS): A system developed by Macrovision to prevent copying onto consumer VCRs.
• Content Scrambling System (CSS): Method for protecting DVD-Video content via authentication and content scrambling developed primarily by Matsushita and Toshiba.
• Copy Guard Management System (CGMS): A "serial" copy generation management system (SCMS) designed control the amount of legal copies allowed.
• Digital Transmission Content Protection (DTCP): Specifies robust encryption of content passing between domestic digital devices via IEEE 1394, through the use of copy control information, authentication and key exchange, digital encryption and system renewability.
• Content Protection for Recordable Media (CPRM): Specification enabling protected exchange of audio/visual content recorded on various portabledata storage media types, including DVD, SD Memory Cards, CompactFlash and IBM Microdrive media.
• Content Protection for Pre-recorded Media (CPPM): Specification for robust protection of DVD-Audio content stored on DVD-ROM media. Specifies encrypted storage of content, protected storage of content management information, system renewability and methods to prevent playback of bit-by-bit copies.
• High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP): A specification developed by Intel Corporation that encrypts each pixel as it moves from a PC or set-top box to digital displays across the DVI interface. The HDCP specification provides a robust and transparent method for transmitting and receiving digital entertainment content to DVI-compliant digital displays.
• Verance Watermark: Selected for use as a worldwide industry standard in copy protected DVD Audio and for the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI). The Verance watermarking technology is inaudible, robust and tamper resistant and capable of surviving translation from analogue to digital, compressed to decompressed and encrypted to unencrypted.

http://www.pctechguide.com/34DVD_Content_protection.htm