This was during an era where VHS was standard and DVD’s were just brand new at the time (before streaming sites existed). Chains like Blockbuster were booming back then with people renting movies or even TV shows for a fee but have to return them by an expected date, what happens is that in order to “keep” a copy, people would use a PC with disc burning software to burn the contents from that DVD onto a blank one.
Know those blank white DVDs? Basically those were used on storing a “pirated” disc for themselves before returning the rented copy back at the video rental store. When I was a kid, I remember encountering what clearly a pirated copy of The Prince of Egypt (so who ever pirated it kept the rented copy) since the disc art is crappy & low quality (it’s been printed then glued onto a blank DVD used for copying upon peeling it off).
Blank dvds weren’t common to store pirated movies from rental.
If you did you ripped the whole DVD with software but only copies the movie, I remember doing that with my Star Wars DVD and my PSP.
But the software was pricey and the hardware even more so.
It was more common to record onto a blank VHS, but on demand video wasn’t much of an idea at the time and for the cost especially for how cheap dvds were it was cheaper to just by than pirate.
Format shifting like getting that 1 dvd of Family guy on your iPod was more important at the time.
Piracy was more focused on reducing your TV price by getting the codes from Dish Satellites, especially if you were Canadian getting US TV