The DVD Copy Control Association (DVD CCA) is an organization primarily responsible for the

copy protection Copy protection, also known as content protection, copy prevention and copy restriction, describes measures to enforce copyright by preventing the reproduction of software, films, music, and other media. Copy protection is most commonly found on ...

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...

s. The

Content Scramble System The Content Scramble System (CSS) is a digital rights management (DRM) and encryption system employed on many commercially produced DVD-Video discs. CSS utilizes a proprietary 40-bit stream cipher algorithm. The system was introduced around 1996 ...

(CSS) was devised for this purpose to make

copyright infringement Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, s ...

difficult, but also presents obstacles to some legitimate uses of the media. The association is also responsible for the controversial

Regional Playback Control RPC-1 and RPC-2 are designations applied to firmware for DVD drives. Older DVD drives use RPC-1 firmware, which allows DVDs from any region to play. Newer drives use RPC-2 firmware, which enforces DVD region code, DVD region coding at the Electronic ...

(RPC), the region encoding scheme which gives movie studios geographic control over DVD distribution. As of 2001, members included film distributors such as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Twentieth Century Fox and Warner Bros. They filed the much publicized case versus

Jon Johansen Jon Lech Johansen (born November 18, 1983 in Harstad, Norway), also known as DVD Jon, is a Norwegian programmer who has worked on reverse engineering data formats. He wrote the DeCSS software, which decodes the Content Scramble System used for ...

who they alleged wrote

DeCSS DeCSS is one of the first free computer programs capable of decrypting content on a commercially produced DVD video disc. Before the release of DeCSS, open source operating systems (such as Berkeley Software Distribution, BSD and Linux) could n ...

. The case was dropped in January 2004. CSS decrypting software (such as

DVD Decrypter DVD Decrypter is a deprecated software application for Microsoft Windows that can create backup disk images of the DVD-Video structure of DVDs. It can be used to make a copy of any DVD protected with Content Scrambling System (CSS). The progra ...

AnyDVD AnyDVD is a device driver for Microsoft Windows which allows decryption of DVDs on the fly, as well as targeted removal of copy preventions and user operation prohibitions (UOPs). With an upgrade, it will also do the same for HD DVD and Blu-r ...

, and

DVD Shrink DVD Shrink is a freeware DVD transcoder program for Microsoft Windows that uses a DVD ripper to back up DVD video. The final versions are 3.2.0.15 (English) and 3.2.0.16 (German); all other versions, such as DVD Shrink 2010, are illegitimate. D ...

) allows a region-specific DVD to be copied as an all-region DVD. It also removes

Macrovision TiVo Corporation, formerly known as the Rovi Corporation and Macrovision Solutions Corporation, was an American technology company. Headquartered in San Jose, California, the company is primarily involved in licensing its intellectual property ...

, CSS, region codes, and

user operation prohibition The user operation prohibition (abbreviated UOP) is a form of use restriction used on video DVD discs and Blu-ray discs. Most DVD players and Blu-ray players prohibit the viewer from performing a large majority of actions during sections of a DVD ...

s. They also filed the suit '' DVD CCA v. Bunner'' against people who distributed DeCSS, seeking injunctions to stop further distribution based on trade secret claims. The injunction was eventually denied because CSS was no longer a secret by the time litigation occurred.

Features restricted by manufacturers

All hardware manufacturers (especially DVD player/burner manufacturers) implement DVD CCA-mandated enforcement features on their products as RPC (which is one of three restrictions in the Content Scramble System); some even go beyond that and implement additional features to restrict

ripping Ripping is extracting all or parts of digital content from a container. Originally, it meant to rip music out of Commodore 64 games. Later, the term was used to extract WAV or MP3 format files from digital audio CDs, but got applied as well to ext ...

, for example: *

RIPLOCK Riplock is a firmware component of some computer DVD and Blu-ray drives that enforces a speed ceiling below a drive's physical capabilities (typically 2×) when DVD-Video or BDMV data is being read. CDs are usually not affected, nor are DVDs or ...

: many manufacturers put an artificial limit, or lock, on ripping speeds. Some of these drives have alternative 3rd-party firmware that have this removed to enable faster ripping. See the RPC-1 Firmware Site for example. * Bitsetting/Booktyping: this is a feature which makes DVD+Rs readable by older DVD players that can play DVD-ROMS only. Some manufacturers disable this feature on their drives. Again, some alternative 3rd-party firmware can enable this so that burned DVDs appear as DVD-ROMs and are playable by older DVD players.

References

External links

DVD CCA
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dvd Copy Control Association Arts and media trade groups Technology trade associations Hardware restrictions Compact Disc and DVD copy protection

Features restricted by manufacturers

See also

References

External links