Bush Signs Bill to Let Parents Strip DVD s

“Bush Signs Bill to Let Parents Strip DVDs

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush on Wednesday signed legislation aimed at helping parents keep their children from seeing sex scenes, violence and foul language in movie DVDs.

The bill gives legal protections to the fledgling filtering technology that helps parents automatically skip or mute sections of commercial movie DVDs. Bush signed it privately and without comment, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said.

The legislation came about because Hollywood studios and directors had sued to stop the manufacture and distribution of such electronic devices for DVD players. The movies' creators had argued that changing the content - even when it is considered offensive - would violate their copyrights.

The legislation, called the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act, creates an exemption in copyright laws to make sure companies selling filtering technology won't get sued out of existence.

Critics of the bill have argued it was aimed at helping one company, Utah-based ClearPlay Inc., whose technology is used in some DVD players. ClearPlay sells filters for hundreds of movies that can be added to such DVD players for $4.95 each month. Hollywood executives maintain that ClearPlay should pay them licensing fees for altering their creative efforts.

Unlike ClearPlay, some other companies produce edited DVD copies of popular movies and sell them directly to consumers.


In a nod to the studios, the legislation contains crackdowns on copyright infringement by explicitly providing no legal protections for those companies that sell copies of the edited movies, creating new penalties for criminals who use small videocameras to record copies of first-run films in movie theaters, and setting tough penalties for anyone caught distributing a movie or song prior to its commercial release.

The legislation also reauthorizes a Library of Congress program dedicated to saving rare, culturally significant works, such as home movies, silent-era films and other works that are unlikely to be protected by the big studios.

© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. -- oOops.”

“Don't worry, America! All that nice, dysfunctional behavior you eat up with a spoon on regular TV is still safe!”

“Exactly!

There were several things about that article that disturbed me though Treebeard.

1) legislation came about because Hollywood studios and directors had sued to stop the manufacture and distribution of such electronic devices..

2) creates an exemption in copyright laws to make sure companies selling filtering technology won't get sued..

3) aimed at helping one company, Utah-based ClearPlay ... sells filters ... for $4.95 each month.

4) Hollywood executives maintain that ClearPlay should pay them licensing fees ...

http://www.clearplay.com/

but hey.. " legislation contains crackdowns on copyright infringement by explicitly providing no legal protections for those companies that sell copies of the edited movies, creating new penalties for criminals who use small videocameras to record copies of first-run films in movie theaters, and setting tough penalties for anyone caught distributing a movie or song prior to its commercial release."

http://www.subzeroblue.com/archives/001167.html
A new technology called Clear Play for DVD

Players will enable people to play any movie they desire without any worries about censoring any undesired scenes involving sex or violence, drugs, drinking or even bad language.

It costs 70 US Dollars and skips all undesired scenes and mutes undesired savage language.

How nice...

This is an indirect way of turning new hollywood movies into old style silent short films.

Come on, I mean with all the sex, violence and bad language in today's movies, basically nothing would be left if all that were cut out?!

But what's interesting is how this will work from a technological point of view.
How will these players recognize these scenes and the language in them?

I don't believe a player can actually do it efficiently on it's own. Children will still get a few lifetime shocks every now and then.

I think that for something like this to truly work, DVDs should provide help by using some way of marking the scenes that should be cut out or the language that should be silenced.

This can be as easy as throwing an xml file on the DVD with the scene start and end time marked, and whether it should be skipped or silenced.

Anyway, I'm interested in knowing how they're doing it.

If anyone has any idea, please share.

http://www.happyrobot.net/words/robot_journal.asp?id=4371

V-Chip, ClearPlay, and their ilk
First of all, I like nudity.
Profanity.
Explosions.
Fighting.
Car chases.
And combinations of all the above, especially if involving either pirates, chimps, or jive-talking robots.

In college, I had a shirt that said, "F*CK" - without the asterisks.
(I try to keep the robot from being flagged on any corporate web filter thingees)

For my birthday one year, I made a flyer for my party that had an illustration of a condom being rolled onto a #&%!$ (remember that one, college pals?).
Just wanted to get that all out in the open and on the table.

LMAO!! "To sum up I suppose my whole point is that however crazy-ass way you want to raise your kids is fine with me (as long as it's legal yadda yadda yadda). Nutty fundamentalist should be able to have their children watch 'Ghostbusters' and have the "darns" and "dammits" censored out if they so desire - no matter how stupid that concept seems.

You know, freedom and #&%!$."
last edited: 4/28/05 8:12:58 AM”

“What a couple of chuckleheads you are.
Feed your children a diet of porn, and make sure other parents have to do the same.”

“WhackO: http://www.chucklehead.com/data_chead/

CHUCKLEHEAD was a legendary Boston band. They played everywhere from Beantown to Colorado. In eight years, CHUCKLEHEAD brought their own brand of funk to a new level of ridiculous fun; telling their audiences to undress in public, talk with their mouths full of food, be rude to goldfish, spank an Interior Minister, return "Scarface" to the video shop in the "Snow White" video case, and buy a whoopee cushion for everyone they've ever met. They released three albums (two with Wonderdrug) and have a song in the new movie, "Love and Sex."


The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.

chucklehead

SYLLABICATION: chuck·le·head

PRONUNCIATION: chkl-hd

NOUN: Informal A stupid, gauche person; a blockhead.

ETYMOLOGY: Possibly from chuck2.

OTHER FORMS: chuckle·headed —ADJECTIVE
last edited: 4/28/05 8:20:54 AM”

“I'm not the one peddling that sh_t on TV, Whack-Job! Nor am I the one supporting it!

Yeah, there are different ways to tackle this, As TD said. Why on earth would anyone who is concerned about the content rent a Quentin Tarantino movie and watch it with their kids, watered down or not? I am a little leary of government quietly skirting the censorship issue. I really don't know how a filter like this works, but where do they draw lines? Would it filter out the whole movie of say, Farenheit 911?

Ok, that was a tongue in cheek comment, for those ready to pounce! :)”

“Oh, I think it was posted by Whackjob for fun.. I didn't take him serious.. I took it as a troll raising up his head and looking around..”

“lmao!!.. As many times as I have watched Pulp Fiction.. I can't imagine it with the ClearPlay technology. Would the movie even still make any sense??”

“BAH!! One movie already took care of all this nonsense. You could enable the "ChickVision" version in the DVD options and anytime there was a scary scene or nudity these grey hands would come up and the fingers would cover the bad parts. It was hilarious. The movie was a hokey B grade horror movie called.... Cabin Fever

Not a bad movie either if you like B movies”

“That was my point, TD! You could take a movie like Pulp Fiction and it would be pointless to watch it in that way. And, there are those films that are adult matter that you wouldn't want your kids watching and removing a few pair of tits isn't going to sway the gist of the movie one way or another. Family censorship should start in the home. Monitor your kids and what they watch, if this is an issue to you.”

“As a concerned parent of two young boys, I welcome this DVD process.
I do not want the immoral standards of New York City or redneck southerners imposed on my children.”

“lmao!

Good ole NYC! The source of America's ills!”

“* laughs at the Baltimore Marvel *

Well, there will prolly be several more comments made on the net today.. I'll be watching to see what else is said.

I'm just of the opinion that we need to protect the rights of the artist. He or she creates something. If it's good, it sells. If it sucks it doesn't. If you don't like it, don't agree, or find it offensive it is not being forced down your throat.

I don't find it "convenient" to be able to watch anything I want with my children (LOL.. as if) and rest calmly in the assurance that I am being protected from audio and visual imagery by the likes of ClearTalk or whoever.

I also don't like all these exception rulings. Why can't laws be written for the masses?
\
\

Somewhat related.. http://homework.sdmesa.net/libinstr/docs/Cotroversial_Issues_Questions.pdf
last edited: 4/28/05 9:12:48 AM”

“http://www.epinions.com/kifm-review-7C85-8139CDB-39197C60-prod3

"Censorship" is a buzzword. It is a word used to evoke a viseral negative reaction. "How DARE they tell me what I can see!" is supposed to be the usual reaction. Quite often, this is with good reason. Repressive governments have long used censorship to repress the thoughts of the people and to crush movements toward freedom and democracy. We should be wary of any kind of government censorship.

But too often, the cry of "censorship" goes out against what is not truly censorship, but simply selectivity, as if having any kind of taste makes us repressive censors. "How dare Wal-Mart not sell Penthouse! That's CENSORSHIP!" is the cry. Sorry, but no it's not. That is a business decision on the part of a private company on what they choose to associate with their corporate name. Wal-Mart is not banning Penthouse, they are simply chosing not to sell it. That is their right. If you want to buy it, you go somewhere else. That is your right.

One personal peeve of mine is when artists claim the right to take government money and then have no restrictions in what they create. They just took someone else's money! Of course the people (that is, the taxpayers) have the right to put restrictions on that gift. If you truly believe that artistic freedom is paramount to your creativity, then don't take handouts from the government. Government money is tainted money. The minute you take it, you are under someone else's authority. If you don't like those restrictions, don't take the money.

Film censorship is another issue. I strongly believe in film censorship. The movies in this country were censored for 40 years and during that time, they were never better. The most censored era (1930s-1960s) in Hollywood is called "classic film" or "the Golden Era of movies". Far from being restrictive of creativity, the censorship ensured creativity because it put standards up that had to be reached toward and achieved. A Filmmaker couldn't just take the easy (and sleazy) way out by getting profits by sticking a lot of naked women into a film. He had to be more creative than that. The simple fact is, that when the movies were censored the movies were GOOD.
A new version of the "Hays Code" (the old film censorship code") seems to me to be a good idea. Going back to the old one would not be feasible, as it reflected a world that simply no longer exists (some of the words banned by the old code were "mistress" "virgin" "seduction" "housebroken"
and "alley cat"), but a newly written code reflecting our own culture may not be a bad idea. Having a clear set of guidelines of what we, as a society, will and will not accept could work quite well.

As a parent, you absolutely MUST be a censor! Letting your child sit and watch anything that flickers is not doing him any favors. Television, books, films and other entertainments are filled with input which you may or may not want your child exposed to. In this case, it is your job to censor. "Censorship" has become a "dirty word". It brings to mind bluenosed prudes banning classic literature. But realistically, every time you exercise taste, discernment and discretion, you are practicing censorship. In that sense, we should have a lot more censorship today.”

“http://www.capital.demon.co.uk/LA/political/filmcens.txt

In September 1987, ITV showed the premiere of Romancing the Stone on most of the Independent Network. The film began at 8pm and finished at 10pm. At the cinema, the film was awarded a `PG' (`parental guidance') certificate. This meant that it was judged suitable in the cinema for all but the youngest moviegoer. In spite of this, the word `#&%!$' was edited out of the film at every occurrence during the first hour of the film's showing on television. The effect was such that the film was punctuated with one-second periods of silence whenever the offending word was due to appear. At exactly nine o'clock the floodgates opened, so to speak, and viewers were suddenly introduced to a word that they had been previously denied in the first half of the film. The illogicality is clear. Parents were not likely to allow young children to start watching a film at 8pm, only then to call a halt at 9pm because of television's self-imposed witching hour. This was quite different from the sort of censorship that denies a vocal TV platform to perceived Northern Irish undesirables; this was the result of a reluctantly self-imposed policy.”

“http://www.shapeofdays.com/2004/11/abc_affiliates_.html

"More than 20 ABC television affiliates, including my hometown station, WFAA-TV, have decided not to broadcast the network's Veterans Day presentation of Saving Private Ryan, citing concerns about possible FCC fines."

hehe.. what are they going to do take the whole first 5 minutes of the movie out???”

“It's not (government-sponsored) censorship if I elect to watch a PG-13 movie with my little ones and turn on a technology to keep inappropriate scenes from coming through. We already do the same thing with distraction and the mute button.

I like the idea.”