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Copy Protection for Your DVDs, Part 2

Feb 22, 2010 12:00 PM, By Jan Ozer

           

Figure 3. Kent Hepworth, who shoots and produces DVDs for several blacksmithing organizations, reports no compatibility issues or other complaints with the more than 300 discs he has distributed with VideoWrite encryption.

My last interview was with Kent Hepworth, a retired mechanical engineering professor who shoots and produces DVDs for several blacksmithing organizations, such as the Alabama Forge Council. A blacksmith aficionado, Hepworth started showing up at meetings, seminars, and tradeshows with his camera and produced DVDs for his own use. He showed the DVDs to the organizations, which requested permission to sell them. They became so popular that Dr. Hepworth had to buy a Microboards CX-1 and then an MX-2 duplicator to reproduce them, and he has produced more than 150 separate DVDs.

One of the societies reported that it was losing revenue from illegal copying and asked if there was any way to protect the discs. That's when Hepworth upgraded to the MX-2 and started using the Fortium Technology. He reports that he's sold more than 300 discs with copy protection with no compatibility issues or any other complaints, and that his customers feel more confident that they're not losing sales due to illegal copying.

Getting started

Overall, these results were pretty impressive: no compatibility issues, increased sales, fewer videos on YouTube. The big question in my mind was accessibility. Do you need to purchase an MX-2 or similar big-iron product to use the technology?

I circled back with the Fortium folks to discuss how smaller producers could acquire this copy protection. It turns out that you don't need a special type of hardware. You just need a standard DVD recorder and USB port for a dongle. You can get the ball rolling by contacting Fortium.