Launched in December 1995, the digital versatile disk (DVD) standard was the first format to unite the computer and consumer electronics environments, but it has also raised issues about copy protection. Four years since, the Working Groups of the DVD forum have developed a family of compatible DVD specifications that include DVD-Video and -Audio for mass distribution of prerecorded motion pictures and music, DVD-ROM for prerecorded software programs and multimedia, DVD-RAM for general read-and-write applications, DVD-R for write-once recordable media, and its rewritable version DVD-RW. Driven by these specifications, encryption technologies for global copy protection of digital content have also been developed to protect copyrighted content.
