Copy protection seems to be a very important issue for Nintendo with the choice of DVD with the Dolphin. Nintendo 2000 News relayed a story from EE Times about Matsushita's involvement with Nintendo in the battle against piracy.

We did not want to use CD-ROM," said Hiroshi Yamauchi, president of Nintendo. From the viewpoint of copyright protection, "we concluded that DVD is the best medium for software distribution, and allied with Matsushita (Panasonic) for its DVD technology," he said.

Matsushita played the leading role in developing the Contents Scramble System (CSS), a DVD disk scramble/encryption technology that prevents illegal copying of DVD-Video. Nintendo considered Matsushita's existing technology and know-how, but the game company is not satisfied with the level of the current CSS.

To meet Nintendo's more stringent copy-protection requirements, Matsushita has been commissioned to develop an enhanced copy-protection system for Nintendo's game disk. "The disk for Nintendo's game system will be 99% the same as DVD." The difference will be in the copy-protection scheme, which won't be compatible with other DVD players. The Nintendo Dolphin hardware will still be able to play DVD movies.