For the millions of parents around the world, children's television shows and movies are an important part of the day. Imagine your daughter begs you for the archived Disney classic Snow White. You can not find this DVD in any stores or order it from the Disney Web site. Your only hope is to buy it from an auction site, such as Ebay.com. The cheapest Platinum edition, the two disc movie is about $34. After shipping and handling, parents of the "got to have the Snow White DVD" child are shelling out around $40. The DVD arrives; the child tears open the packaging runs over to the DVD player and throws in the DVD. After watching the movie for 5 straight hours, Snow White gets tossed aside and Cinderella goes in. Two days later, a piercing scream comes from the living room. The newly purchased Snow White video has been thrown around one too many times and now it will not play. This would not be a problem had the parents been able to legally copy the Snow White DVD in order to allow their child to use one copy and keep the original safe.
There is a thin line between the legal and illegal copying of DVDs. This paper will discuss how the technology started and where it is going, the history of the laws, how movie producing companies are combating against this technology, what the companies who produce this technology are doing to keep their products current and how this is affecting DVD sales.
Due to the expensive nature of the film industry, $9 to go to a movie, $5 to rent a movie, $20 to buy a movie, movie lovers everywhere searched for a cheaper way to watch movies. It started back with VHS tapes, when people would buy the second VCR, connect the two and start copying their VHS tapes. Back i ...