sanitizing hollywood !!!

[trailergod]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...zing_hollywood

WASHINGTON - Fledgling technology that helps parents prevent children from watching movie scenes depicting sex, violence or foul language won new legal protections Tuesday under a bill Congress is sending to President Bush.



The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act would assure manufacturers of DVD players and other devices using such technology they would not be violating copyrights of the Hollywood producers of movies.


The House passed it Tuesday on a voice vote. The Senate passed it in February.


The bill also would make it a federal crime to use video cameras to record films in movie theaters, and it would set tough penalties of up to 10 years in prison for anyone caught distributing a movie or song prior to its commercial release.


"Imagine the frustration of spending months or even years working on an album only to have those carefully crafted plans usurped by an eleventh-hour theft," said Mitch Bainwol, chief executive for the Recording Industry Association of America.


Moviegoers caught using video cameras in theaters would face up to three years in prison for a first offense and up to six years for later arrests.


More than 90 percent of pirated movies are recorded by people in the audience with a camcorder, said Dan Glickman, the head of the Motion Picture Association of America.


"Video theft hurts taxpayers, it hurts consumers, it hurts the creative process and it hurts the hundreds of thousands of people who work hard each day to make the magic of the movies," said Glickman, whose son is a producer.


The bill's most controversial provision focused on new filtering technology that lets parents automatically skip or mute sections of commercial movies that contain foul language, violence or nudity.


The author of the provision, Rep. Lamar Smith (news, bio, voting record), R-Texas, compared a parent's freedom to skip violent movie scenes to skipping offensive passages in a book. That section of the bill was rewritten to explicitly provide no legal protections for companies that sell copies of edited movies.


"It lets parents decide for themselves what children see and hear on television," Smith said. "Raising children may be the toughest job in the world. Parents need all the help they can get."


Some lawmakers said they objected to the filtering provision but voted to approve the bill because of the crackdown on copyright infringement in other parts of the legislation.


"The intent of the movie-filtering technology is to sanitize movies to protect children," said Rep. Diane Watson (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif. "While I support family-friendly entertainment, I believe this method is not only a violation of filmmakers' copyright protections but also an infringement of their artistic vision."


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 to help parents filter inappropriate material by muting dialogue or skipping scenes. ClearPlay sells filters for hundreds of movies that can be added to such DVD players for $4.95 each month.


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


Hollywood executives have complained that ClearPlay's technology represents unauthorized editing of their movies. They maintain that ClearPlay should pay them licensing fees for altering their creative efforts.


The Directors Guild of America sued ClearPlay in federal court in Colorado alleging copyright violations. The company's chief executive, Bill Aho, said he expects the lawsuit will be dismissed after Bush signs the bill into law.





The bill is Senate 167.

I'm shocked !!! whats goin there in USA, now its ok to change works of art ?

[bebbaboo]

Well, this is just wrong. If you don't want your kids to hear what's in the DVD, don't play it. For God's sake ... this is just dumb. And the idiot is from Texas. Sorry about that folks!

[Otha Star]

I'm offended. Let's go to the Louvre and wipe that smirk off of Mona Lisa right now!!!

[ZUBi]

And the idiot is from Texas.

I told yaa/all of yaa already that a couple of times, I U won't listen to Me...

[Shrubz]

Hahaha, and of course ClearPlay is based in Utah.

Honestly I don't see the big deal with DVD players that edit movies (you choose in the settings)... you can already buy them at Wal-Mart. How is it any different than when a movie is edited for network television? Same thing except you're working with DVD quality and you customize what kind of content is cut out.

Although, I do agree... if a movie is inappropriate, parents shouldn't be showing it to their kids in the first place!! Yet another device to allow parents to have less responsibility for their kids.

[Kn'thrak]

wasn't the purpose of DVDs to be edittable for viewers? One of the main selling points for DVDs less than a decade ago were that you can place parent locks on them. Go to your DVD settings now and I'm sure parents locks will show up on your tv that you can choose from.

But yes that I don't agree with editted movies can not be enjoyed fullest so just don't show the movie. Sometimes, the movie's moral story is more than the movie itself. Isn't that why The Passion was released again editted?

[trailergod]

yes, you can parent lock movies and so, but its not correct to start selling DVDs or movies or show movies that are edited in such a way to satisfy some people in society, expecially when its been edited or censored without the aproval of the director or the producer.

This law makes this possible, until now it has been unlawful to edit/censor movies without the aproval movie maker. Soon you will have sites/shops that will sell DVDs that are Censored/edited.... without the aproval of the maker.

TV stations buy the rights for the movie and have permission of the movie maker in editing it for TV broadcast.

[redbear]

"somewhere in texas, a village is missing an idiot".....too funny. i have a big problem with this and the whole Clearplay thing. parents can already fast forward the "naughty" scenes in movies. (hint: its that little button next to the play button) but this will actually allow more parents to sit their child down in front of the tv without the parent actually "parent" what the child is viewing. i hate the fact that america actually supports this type of behavior. let parents do as little as possible with thier child and let them shrug their responsibility onto someone else....to just allow big brother to step in and control our lives....what crap.


as a sidenote: as soon as my child was born, i turned off my cable. we don't watch any tv at all in my house. yes, we watch movies all the time but we only watch two, one for him and one for the parents. most of the time, the parent movie is one of his or at least something he can watch. we might have to distract him during certain scenes, but that is my job as a parent to do just that. not have some device do it for me...

[trailergod]

this will happen and is already happening !!!!!

http://www.cleanfilms.com/

"Our oldest son (age 19) has started asking us to keep our eyes open for certain movies on CleanFilms... for birthdays, Christmas, etc."
.... voted in high school "most likely to be living in his parents house at age 30.

"The movie "Pay IT Forward" is one of my all time favorites. I was finally able to let my 10 year old grand daughter watch it after I watched your edited version. You did a great job of editing the movie and I was very pleased!"
... so now she knows that going into a crack house alone, looking to help some junkie that has fallen on bad times has no bad repurcussions.

"I recently checked out 'My Cousin Vinny' from CleanFilms.com. This was a movie I had long wanted to see, but never could because of the offensive language."
... because if i had seen it unedited, there would be no doubt my ears would have burst the moment profanity was spoken.

"It came on TV last night, and because I enjoyed it so much, I thought, 'well, it's a TV version....' I cannot believe the poor edits where you could see the person's mouth move & still figure out what they were saying"
.... because using my powers of deduction would cause my eyes to burst knowing what and actor really said IN MY EDITED MOVIE!

"It was a treat not to worry about late fees - we were able to watch Swordfish twice before sending it back in. . . . you can be sure, we will continue our membership."
... No joke here. Just pointing out that the only parts of that movie to watch are the first explotion that kills cops and Halle's tatas. So basically, your getting a candied apple without the carmel or nuts.

"Enemy at the Gates is our first rental . . . and I want to thank you for providing such quality editing. With teenage boys who love war and adventure I have found it difficult to accommodate their desires and not violate my biblical standards."

[enkydu]

I have to admit, the purtitan form of editing these movies is ridiculous. Although I don't want my kids to see explicit sex or hear foul language, I also don't want my kids to watch a movie whose overall theme is not good either. People who think that this device can protect their kids from Hollywood liberalism are ignorant.

Go ahead, buy the device if it makes you happy. People who use it aren't changing a piece of art any more than I am when I watch 45 mins of a movie one night and the rest a second night--a scenerio the filmmaker would never approve of! It's your house. If you think this will solve all your kid's problems, go nuts...it'll just drives me nuts in a couple years when you come running to me and my tax dollars to pay your kids' counseling because of your stupid mistakes.

[carl]

yes, you can parent lock movies and so, but its not correct to start selling DVDs or movies or show movies that are edited in such a way to satisfy some people in society, expecially when its been edited or censored without the aproval of the director or the producer.

This law makes this possible, until now it has been unlawful to edit/censor movies without the aproval movie maker. Soon you will have sites/shops that will sell DVDs that are Censored/edited.... without the aproval of the maker.

TV stations buy the rights for the movie and have permission of the movie maker in editing it for TV broadcast.

This is not about censorship, or destroying a directors artistic vision, or even about hurting your movie going experience. Quite the contrary this is a good thing for everybody. Put it this way, the studios who create movies are out to make money. It's a fair deal, since the whole reason to make a buisness is to make money (regardless of what they claim) and as a result the decision to make maximum profit is the RIGHT decision! Up until now, if a film is released aimed at a target audience but contains a scene that offends parents and limits that audience then the right decision is to cut that scene and maximise the audience, thus maximising the profits that they released the film in the first place. Now though parents have a DVD player that enables them to choose to cut that scene and so they are more likely to buy an uncut dvd since they can cut it themselves and thus the studios are more likely to release a DVD uncut because this will maximise their profits. The results, people who dont want to see the scene get to watch the scene without it and you get your uncut DVD with the scene included. Everyones a winner, you, them, the directors, everyone, and yet still you're complaining.

The reason given is that people are destroying a work of art, but that is not even close to being true. Take for example the statue of David, a very controversial statue among some people for the fact that it shows a penis. Childish yes, and if one of these people was to break into a museum with a hammer and chisel and remove David's manhood then that would be wrong, desecrating a priceless work of art. However if one of these people wrote an article on the statue, took a picture of it and photoshopped over the offending item then their wouldbe nothing wrong with that. The art remains intact, the artists vision has not been compromised and the only thing being done is to change a copy of the art so that the person in question gets what they want without depriving anyone of anything. Same thing here, a dvd is merely a copy of the film. The artistic vision still remains in the original film print, and if somebody chooses to alter a digital copy (which is infinitely copyable) to get what they want out of it then they are happy without depriving you of what you want to see. Where's the problem?