Slashdot Mirror
Hollywood Says No to Filtering DVD Player
haplo21112 writes "There is a posting over at ZDNet about how Hollywood continues to trample on the American consumer's free use rights. They want to prevent the sale of a special DVD player which can be used to edit out offensive material from a DVD in realtime. While I don't agree with censorship in general, I do believe its everyone's right to do what they wish with their own media."
This technology would allow for parents to show otherwise questionable movies to their kids. That would lead to a higher number of movies bought or rentals per family, because some movies are no longer out of the question.
Not that I am agreeing with the censorship, I just don't see the logic in trying to ban this.
"You sir, have just crossed my happy line..."
This isn't so bad. Perhaps they'll make parents actually think about what DVDs they let their children watch instead of thinking technology can parent for them. (yeah, fat chance, I know) (also, Double standards: I can have them, you can't)
How would people feel if someone wrote some magical piece of software that prevented users from having to view annoying copyright- and authorship- nag banners and notices that appear while running software ?
I'm guessing that the studios aren't so much interested in forcing people to watch "offensive scenes" as they are in ensuring that they are going to be the sole avenue for producing "Family" or "Edited" versions. A Studio might, for example, decide to release a PG-13 version of James Cameron's Aliens. There would probably be a market for that unless, of course, ClearPlay, CleanFlicks or some other company is already providing families with the ability to edit their R-rated Aliens DVD on the fly.
The author of the article would have a stronger argument if he wasn't distorting the true intentions of the studios like that.
GMD
watch this
No one is telling anyone they are not allowed to watch what they want, which would be an abridgement of free speech against the person who was trying to allow others to watch what that individual wanted, but rather not allow someone not to watch only the parts they want. How is this really any different from allowing scene selection? ("Let's see... I want to watch Moria, then Weathertop, and then I want to watch the Amon Sul. After that, Matrix lobby scene, followed by Agent defeat.") I don't see any difference between watching scenes in a particular order, through using scene selection or, heaven forbid, PowerDVD's bookamark system, and a DVD player that skips particular scenes entirely.
This position is similar to a position that says "You are required to watch our films." It's not censorship, since it doesn't forbid some things from being shown, but it is absurd and outrageous.
Sigs are like bumper stickers.
Folks,
We need to be very careful about throwing around the word "censorship" in a context like this. IMO, it is not censorship or anything like it for a parent to fast-forward through a questionable scene in a movie. It's not censorship for a commercial organization to decide it doesn't want to carry/show/broadcast certain material.
Censorship is state-sponsored, implicitly-at-gunpoint, restrictions on free speech, freedom of the press, etc. It's prohibited by the Bill of Rights .
There are certain movies that are great, but not quite acceptable for my family to watch.
With a technology like this, you could tell the DVD player what's appropriate for the audience.
It would be a really great solution to show certain movies in schools too.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I love the part in the article linked to where the ClearPlay CEO talks about watching movies with his kids and being uncomfortable with the language. Excuse me? You're watching R-rated movies with your kids and you all are uncomfortable with the language? Here's a tip: watch G-rated movies. That's what the rating system is for. Here's another tip: don't let your kids watch anything but G-rated movies if you don't want them hearing bad language. It works in my household.
Then there's the part in the ZDNet article about "Hollywood shouldn't force its paying customers to watch those scenes." Excuse me? Last time I checked, Hollywood has not forced me to watch anything. If you don't like nudity and violence in your movies, don't watch R-rated movies. It's simple.
To the real issue, though, it seems that there is no difference between CleanFlix and ClearPlay. Both want to profit by creating derivative works of copyrighted material. ClearPlay isn't some magical filter that automatically detects bad language and lots of flesh. It is a subscription service that will filter out movies that they have "edited". Same thing, different approach. Expect Hollywood to smack them down.
Use the rating system folks. It's your friend.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
...when you do it to yourself. It's called freedom of choice. It's only censorship when you prevent someone else from seeing it.
/. settings to filter out Jon Katz stories, that's my choice -- not censorship.
If I set my
If I fast forward through commercials on a taped broadcast, that my choice -- not censorship.
If I want to use a DVD player that imports an edit list that filters out the naughty bits, that' my choice -- not censorship.
Ideology is for ideots.
I do believe its everyone's right to do what they wish with their own media
It's not 'your own media' dude.
When you download Linux, you DO NOT OWN IT. Copyrights are ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. You only have rights to it, as granted by the owner of the material, and this is how it should be.
I'll give you a wonderful example. Brigham Young University decided to show Schindler's List to the students. Except, they wanted to show their own version, with all the "offensive content" removed. Speilberg said "no way", and he was fully within his rights to do so.
If copyright owners are not allowed to control what happens to their work, we could not enfoce the GPL. Free software would die.
I could see that Hollywood is taking this approach to get a foot in the door for when the more interesting filters start appearing. For example, given the direction that modern advertisements are going I can forsee a future where they become an integrated part movies (they sometimes allready are). It would be in Hollywoods favor to have a case on it's side that helps the ban of 'advertisement-filters'.
... is that survey shows that 18% of people think. No, I have not right do do anything AT HOME with MY DVD that might interfere with copyright as the corporations understand it. Hopefully those are people on Hollywood payroll. But if not, that is a serious problem.
If I don't have the right to filter a movie as I play it back, then perhaps I also don't have the right to watch it on a dusty screen in bad lighting, or on a screen of the wrong aspect ratio that adds black bars. Perhaps I don't have the right to wear sunglasses when looking at a painting. (Even blinking might be bad.) Perhaps I don't have the right to listen to music on crappy speakers, or lossy-compress it, or sing along with it. (If you've ever heard me sing, you know that "Screaming For Vengeance" sounds a lot better when I'm not around.)
Perhaps I don't have right to view a web page without the ads, or to have my browser override a stylesheet. Perhaps I don't have the right to view a web page unless I agree to download and install whatever plugins it wants so that I can experience the page as fully intended.
I think there's some point, within the my personal domain, where all the artist's rights end. At that point, everything that comes in becomes mine to lightly process or heavily mutilate, however I please. It would probably be foolish of me to butcher the works, but that's my decision to make. I cannot harm the artist; I can only harm myself.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I would make a distinction between the individual's right to modify in any way works they have purchased, without redistributing them, and the right of a corporation to make big bucks selling a machine that has its sole utility in hacking apart other people's art. I have no problem with a machine that edits and replaces parts of the film with the consent and instruction of the artists, but selling unauthorized modifications to someone else's work is clearly not fair use: this is no different from a third party selling DVDs of modified scenes from the original work, it just includes a handy machine to also hack those scenes into the original DVD for you.
Of course, these objections are pure hypocrisy coming from the same media giants that speed up movies and squish the credits down to a quater of your screen, if they show them at all, but that's a separate issue.
"Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
Dollars to Donuts, the MPAA has a bot that is just flooding the polling server, and accounts for that 18% of the survey. Which just attests to the fact that everyone has responded so resoundingly against the MPAA, that concerned humans (and slashdotters too) are outflooding them.
I mean really are they next going to tell us that to use the fast forward, pause, and rewind buttons are a violation of the copyright, and if we want to get up and go to the bathroom, or make popcorn, we have to miss the movie just like they intended us to do in the movie theater.
Well it is quite obvious that all of the Executives have Au Pairs to watch their kids for them while they are off busy at fancy Hollywood parties. They handle the copyright violations by having a person fastforward through the bad bits for their kids.
Sig Nazi- "No Sig for you, come back 1 year."
Ok, here's my opinion on it.
If I own a DVD, it's well within my rights if I don't want to see it all the way through, mute some parts, hear some parts in a provided alternate language track, watch it backwards, or skip over parts I don't want to see. Consider: if I feel that the best way to experience looking at a painting I own is to look at it standing on my head, no one has any right to criticize. You may think me silly, but you can't say I can't do that, even if you painted it.
Censorship implies that there is a third party (such as the government) interceding and preventing the original art from being shown. In the case of the Brigham Young University viewing of Schindler's List, it is censorship because it wasn't a private viewing by a home video owner, but a public showing, and BYU wanted to censor what it considered offensive. That is a case where the artist has a right to prevent a showing.
On-the-fly editing is not censorship. If I choose to see the film in such a manner as I see fit, the director has no right to say I can't, because I'm not imposing my view onto others, like BYU was by wanting to show a film deviating from the artist's vision.
By extension, I think ClearPlay is perfectly legal. ClearPlay is not distributing any version of the film, it is providing a method of playing studio-made DVDs while editing on the fly. The viewer and owner of the disc needs to agree that she wants to see the film in the way proscribed by ClearPlay (by paying the service fee ClearPlay charges), and therefore I consider it legitimate.
For what it's worth, I wouldn't pay a monthly fee for access to editing filters I can't save or edit myself. I WOULD buy a player or playing software that would allow me to impose my own filter.
"What's so random about flipping a coin? Ever heard of the I Ching?"
Wah. Imagine making a shitty movie and having someone hit 'Stop' and watching something better. Would your perfect world allow directors to disable that button too, for fear that someone might not respect their artistic integrity?
You have no idea if it's my first, or fifteenth time watching a movie. Maybe I want to skip to a certain scene to see a specific actor, or show a friend something. Maybe I want to come in where I left off the week before. Maybe I'm simply smarter than you and your hideous mangling of a movie makes it painful for me to watch some parts that you think are high art. Or, maybe, like the people developing the player, I have decided for my own reasons that I don't like some parts of the movie and I want to watch *my* movie in the way that I want.
Once you sell something it becomes the property of the purchaser. The only thing copyright prevents is their making copies. You sell all control over everything else when you sell the work. If you insist people watch it your way, don't sell it, play it in carefully controlled environments.
"Oh bother," said Pooh, as he hid Piglet's mangled corpse. dbishop
Jesus, with a sig like that this guy is complaining about "gory violence" in movies!
nohup rm -rf ~/. >& zen &