Comment by gjsman-1000

First generation copy-protection efforts were lackluster.

Case in point: I ordered three DVD box sets from eBay, new and sealed, a few weeks ago. All three were counterfeit, and all three were from different sellers. Very convincing counterfeits all of them - but the single-layer discs (because pirates struggle with the more common dual-layer) and lack of copy protection on studio releases (because pirates can't recreate it) were the giveaways - along with some sloppy data layer cutting edges.

Compare this to, say, Blu-ray. It has also been cracked - but counterfeit Blu-rays are far, far more rare and easily detected. Why? The DRM is stronger, sure - but Blu-rays are also entire Java programs and much harder to replicate or rip than a DVD menu. Many Blu-ray Discs have Cinavia, which embeds invisible data inside the video and audio streams informing the player that the disc should have copy protection. Cinavia can't be removed without massive distortions to the video and audio, and pirates can't create their own copy-protected discs - thus, any attempt to make (even press) an unprotected disc with a protected video stream will fail. And finally, rather than DVD which has the recordable and pressed discs with a similar color, Blu-ray uses almost transparent discs for pressed ones, but dark black for burnables, making spotting fakes visually easy.

Where am I going with this? My point is that DVD used only one real form of protection, and it was weak and broken less than a year after release. Blu-ray uses up to, I believe, five different methods all assuming the others have fallen. And that's for a system that doesn't get software updates and came out 15 years ago, unlike a video game console.

DRM in breadth and in depth.