Think about the following case:
You went to the video store and borrowed a DVD for a nice home cinema on your home PC. When you inserted the DVD in your DVD-rom an EULA showed up to be able to watch the movie. You accepted and enjoyed the movie for example with your girlfriend.
In the night you took back the DVD to the store and went happy to bed after a cosy evening watching a movie.
Three days later you wanted to safe your actual work (for example from you diploma thesis) to a CD-RW. When you started the burning program to safe your files, the program prompted with an error message that no CD burning rom is found. Astonishment, the writer was still there in the computer, but WTF ... :(
A few hours and an intensive google search later everything was ok again and you won't believe what was the reason for the troubles. The DVD installed a small program on your PC which put your PC off using the CD writer any longer.
I found an very interesting HEISE article about it and thanks to them the producer of the DVD was forced to provide a tool to deinstall their program to make your writer functioning again.
I don't know why they develop such a copy protection - I think the money could spent the other way to make people buy DVDs. With the development costs DVDs could become cheaper and special appeals (like great packages or something similar - I think marketing workers have better ideas than me) could be provided to make people buy DVDs.
Be sure - if I had bought that DVD I would sent it back and never ever buy a DVD from a publisher who uses this copy protection again!
SHAME ON YOU!!
