Chemistry Question: What readily avalable chemical (reducing?) agents
can be used (say in a bath) to extend the life of a self-destructing
DVD which relies on oxygen in the air to turn a photosensitive pigment
opaque and thus renders the disk optically unreadable?  This recently
released technology as described in patent number 6,709,802 is a form
of planned obsolesence and is not a copy-protection scheme. What
common chemical can the DVD be treated with (say in a chemical
bath)such that the photosensitive pigment remains locked in a
permanently reduced state and thus extends the life of the DVD that
one has purchased and now owns?

lol....

This patent covers a bunch of stuff, not just doping with an oxygen
sensitive compound.  If it was simple as oxygen exposure, u could just
coat it with vegetable oil to prevent oxidation, but that isn't really
what they've described.

The smart idea that you can't get around is the use of a
photosensitive pigment that gets activated by the laser in your drive.
 This would be doped into the polycarbonate, and would slowly generate
singlet oxygen by a chemical reaction with some other compound also
impregnated into the polycarbonate.  Such a process would likely be
pretty fast with the high energy light of a laser, but slow with
ambient light.  Thus, the more you use your DVD, the quicker it dies.

Such a process would not stop you from say making a copy of said DVD,
should you say, plug in the DVD player, into say, a DVD recorder....

Dr. Bob has made the point that the patent itself also mentions the
generation of singlet oxgen secondary to the dvd laser stiking the
photosensitive pigment (in addition to other mechanisms). However,
this light oxidation is not the primary mechanism that the disks which
are currently being sold use. Instead, they work by exposure to oxygen
in the air. This is evidenced by the fact that they are sold in an
oxygen-proof package which has areas that are exposed to light but do
not oxidize. Thus, it is reasonable that a reducing agent can prevent
them from being unreadable. My question is: what common reducing agent
that is readily available could accomplish this?