Since I last saw this thread 4 years ago, I have applied various brands of labels to various brands of DVD's and have concluded that labels DO INDEED damage the information on the DVD in some fashion. Approximately 60% of my movie DVDs (over 700) with labels on them are partially corrupt. None of my non-labeled DVDs are corrupt. 100% of those still work fine.
Of the 60% that are damaged, most are dual layer DVDs. The rest are DVD-/+R. Attempting to "re-rip" them using DVDShrink, Nero or DVDFab on a computer produced errors where there were none before so its impossible to recover the data. These errors occur in the same place which is proof positive that the labels on the DVDs have corrupted the actual stream of pits and grooves on the disc itself rather than merely causing an unbalance in the DVD player.
On an interesting aside, the data corruption appears to begin gradually after some time has elapsed. I'd say about 3 - 6 months. Another interesting aside is that some DVD players did better than others during the initial period of corruption - able to play "past" or "skip over" the bad spots. Unfortunately, this was short-lived as the erosion of data spread thus preventing any player I could find from successfully playing the discs.
Sometimes, the corruption appeared to occur immediately after the label was applied to a perfectly fine disc. This suggests that the corruption may be caused by a shrink/swell factor of the label after it has been applied to a disc. Or perhaps the corruption is caused by both shrink warping and chemical reaction of the adhesive on the plastic.
I have also used the Epson R200 that was mentioned and, while it produced stunning results, most of the prints are now smudged or unreadable from kids touching them with sweaty hands or from moms (and dads) who needed to wash the disc with soap and water. Even after years have passed, the ink did not become 100% waterproof. There is a new technology in printable discs called a WaterShield Surface which would make your prints on the disc waterproof from any inkjet printer but after spending thousands of hours printing DVD labels over these last 4 years, I have finally regressed to the simple and ever-efficient sharpie.
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