Digital Trends – When a traditional optical disc is created, information is copied onto the disc by creating light spots within the dye that coats a standard disc. When a user âburnsâ a new DVD using a DVD-burner drive in a computer, the optical nature of the dye is being altered to match the data. The data is read by looking at the contrasting areas of the disc, but has the flaw of degrading over extremely long periods of time due to fading in sunlight.  Optical discs are also susceptible to humidity and the adhesive holding the dye onto the disc can slowly degrade over time.