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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."
A DVD player that won't let you watch DVDs the way you want to watch them? How long before we see TVs without 'mute' buttons. Can't you just do this kind of thing now anyway with a decent VCR and a little time? When will the anti-digital madness end?
And that would be stealing content.Now we don't want to steal content and deny the HW of its millions (or should i say billions) do we .... ?
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
Does anyone else feel a parallel to when the Catholic Church went along "censoring" all the great works of art which contained nudity by drawing or painting over them, and adding leaves, etc? Personally, I feel art should be left alone. The greatest and most heralded art was made by singular geniuses; no good art was ever created by a committee of politicians...
This is the same principle as those folks who rent out edited DVD's so junior never lays his eyes on a female breast.
This is the same principle as those folks who would "colorize" a classic Black & White film to make it more appealing the general massses.
A artist should have a right to have his creation be experienced unaltered. Unless of course, the artist himself has made the alterations.
This is a simple case of artistic integrity. It is the directors name that scrolls on the screen at the end of the movie.
If you don't want to watch something, do what our president said to do "Turn off the on button"!
Of course, this is Slashdot, where people find a million and one reasons and rationalizations to cut, copy and paste the creative hard work of others.
Well, about 20 years of history shows that Hollywood doesn't want to do that. It 'damages' there Art...
Funny, they don't mind this same Art being butchered for TV and airplanes....
1) Why do you think that this will be used (soley?) to let children watch "bad" movies? Specifically, I prefer to watch PG-13 (and less) movies, but would like to see some R-rated movies, minus gratuitous sex scenes*, or gory violence (I don't enjoy gore, and if I want sex, then I romance my wife).
:-)
2) What double standards? You didn't elaborate, so I have to guess that you are critical of parents telling their children that they are unable to watch movies that the parents *do* watch. If that is your position, then it's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. If I was into gore/horror films, I certainly wouldn't let my 5 year old watch them. Neither would I want him to watch a Kevin Smith film, as there is no need for him to hear the F-word 5 times a minute. How is that a double-standard? I also wouldn't let him drink, vote, or drive.
*Off-topic note about this, I was listening to an archived interview of Chris Rock and Kevin Smith on the Howard Stern show, from just before Dogma's release. One of the most interesting parts of the interview is how everyone on the show agreed that if they could eliminate one thing from their life, it would be porn. It creates such false, twisted, "high" expectations, that no real person could live up to them, and you end up spending your whole time wanking off rather than having real sex with your partner. And none of those people are exactly what you would call "right-wing"
"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."
But they want to require the sale of special DVD players which edit out foreign material from a DVD (ie. region lock-outs).
I knew the MPAA and the DVD Consortium were two-faced, but this is just ridiculous. About the only common trait between these two positions is the elimination of options from the consumer marketplace.
What I'd like to see is some open source "PROMs" that contain all the code to parse the DVD... to tell the damn machine to ignore any commands that would make it ignore MY commands...
Basically, it irks me that the machine is no longer behaving like a VCR or a CD player... that it won't LET me do certain things that the author decides I shouldn't do...
Or perhaps I should replace my Panasonic DVD player with one that does ignore those commands, if such a thing exists...
I guess fundementally, this is the exact same issue as the one in the article. "Who can control how you use copyrighted material you own?"
"Why should I be content to simply live in this world, when I, as a human being, can CREATE it?" - Oertel
They already do! Infrequently, and non-specific yet (I swear to return a DVD that would have an AOL commercial on it). But your point is well made... a filter can exist to skip the FBI warning and whatever other crap studios make unskippable...
I have a partner who has combat-related PTSD. Artillery, automatic weapons fire and PBR's in a movie will trigger nightmares.
It would be nice to be able to pre-mute the soundtrack, at least. It's often hard to dance on the mute button to get the dialog and avoid the rat-a-tat-tat.
This was a particular issue with the movie "The Gods Must Be Crazy." Mostly a charming tale, and the war scenes did have artistic merit, but we would have enjoyed the non-war parts of the movie much more if we could have squelched the guerilla warfare sound effects.
My point being, it's not all about porn. There are more diverse motivations out here.
We need to add a simple scene scripting language to open source players.
The players would have to identify the movie inserted, and select a script based on it. The script would, at first, simply be commands like:
At frame 5,342 mute
At frame 5,370 unmute
At frame 8,330 goto frame 9,010
At frame 10,377 place a black square(x1,y1,x2,y2) with ID 1
At frame 10,402 move and resize square ID 1 to (x1, y1, x2, y2)
At frame 10,700 remove square ID 1
There could be other options such as only viewing a section of the window, zooming it, pixellizing instead of blacking out, etc.
Such a simple script language could be represented in an XML file and database. You could attach ratings to each particular script action, such that the end user could say, "I don't mind profanity or violence, but cut out the hardcore sex."
Not only would such an open system allow 'clean' editing (which could be added to a centralized database, much like FreeDB does for CD listings) but you could offer your own move edits - shift scenes around, cut out jar jar, etc.
-Adam
and maybe we will be real happy without those usage nazis.
the first amendment enshrines the freedoms of speech and association. it does not force us to listen to any drooling lunatic on a soap box. and it does not force us to pay money to a bunch of humiliators who want us to squat and say thank you when they dump on us.
you don't suppose there might be market backlash underway already, people not paying full price for limited access to bad content? hollywood can just go down to the DIVX corner of Circuit City and see how their plans work.
if there is a floor worker at CC that still remembers DIVX.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
You've got to ask where this would stop. If I want to play pieces of my DVDs cut-up and in whatever sequence I want, that is my right as an owner of the media. My wife often doesn't want to watch anything with extremely violent scenes, and these scenes are rarely important to my enjoyment either (often I'd just as soon have them gone, but not so strongly that I wouldn't watch). There still might be a legal issue WRT the "skip data" because a court may decide this is derived from the original work, but this still shouldn't stop the individual from cutting a work in any way they please.
Also, if they appose "special" players that can do this, I suppose they want to outlaw any playback through a computer. Even with MS style DRM, computer playback will be likely to give you a lot more flexibility than with any purpose built player. This may, in fact, be the origin of the fact the MS is supporting the electronics industry against the content providers. Ultimately, Hollywood wants to prevent any playback flexibility, which is the whole point of having PC playback anyway.
Finally, does anyone really think these "special" devices would even work? You're going to have to have some security controls related to loading the "censor" data, and how old do you think the kids have to get before their hacking skills out-distance their parents ability to control these devices. I'm sure that some with some devices all it will take is a power cycle, and you'll be able to play the raw disks again.
I actually like some tv-cleaned versions of movies better because they remove excessive use of language. I'd be mad if they only offered the edited version to me but if the DVD offered 'cleaned' English language version I'd sometimes use it. No new technology required. :)
;)
I'd like to see support for some of these features in Xine, MPlayer, etc. It'd be pretty cool to have language and video masks made for and by a community site. For language just a set of start/stop marks to skip certain channels and for video start/stop/x/y/size data so you could blur objectable spots. Maybe some way to skip scenes or portions of scenese too. MovieBlipsXML?
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
"The major studios and the Directors Guild of America are essentially saying that, when you buy a DVD, you must watch it exactly the way it was created--or not watch it at all."
I wonder what their attitude would be if one of the words of that quote were changed:
"The major studios and the Directors Guild of America are essentially saying that, when you buy a DVD, you must watch it exactly the way it was created--or not buy it at all."
If I were a stockholder in that company, I'd demand to know why they're drawing a line like that for their customers to cross. I mean, if the attitude is "It's our way or the highway", then there's really no reason to think they have customer satisfaction in mind, right? Who'd want to buy a DVD if they're unwilling to listen to people? "Nar, we don't want to put any extras on the DVD. That costs more."
"Directors. If I was a director, I would be pretty upset with 3rd party disruption of my vision"
Too damn bad. When I buy something, it's mine. I interfer with the directors vision all the time when I skip over boring parts of movies I've already seen. They have NO RIGHT to tell me I can't do that. This applies to all art. YOu are perfectly free to buy a painting and then burn it or deface it. When it's yours, you are allowed to do what you wish with it. YOu can't reproduce it, that's copyright infringement, but you may modify and use the copy you own as you see fit.
This is exactly the manner in which Blockbuster forced Full-Screen movies on the average consumer.
If you notice, movies made after Blockbuster became a huge mega conglomerate, are made in very close shots so the transfer to Full Screen Videos and DVD's would not be a pan and scan nightmare. Hollywood's standards are to shoot movies in this manner because of Blockbuster's influence. The same thing will happen if this DVD maker gets his way. Hollywood will further censor and place more stingent policies that will take away a screenplay/Director's vison than they already do.
Movies made before Blockbuster are cenematically better and more creative than movies made now a days. (Independent movies aside)
If this tool is to be allowed into peoples homes, it will put a permanent, negative, and irreversable mark into the creativity of movie making.
If you don't want you or your kids watch potentially offensive material...DONT FRIGGN WATCH IT!!!!
Censorship in TV and the movies are bad enough as it is. Check out the Problems Jimmy Kimmel has with his show. This is but an example of what happens when stupidity and Political Correctness goes unchecked.
We don't need another homoginization or censorship of creativity.
Dolemite
Save the World! Use a Quote!
What is supposed to be the legal basis for the prohibition? Is it that the CSS license prohibits the DVD player manufacturer from including this functionality, so this manufacturer is violating the contract, or is it that they haven't licensed CSS decryption and are using some derivative of decss that might violate the DMCA, or is it just that showing snipped versions is illegal?
The last would be absurd, even though that's what it sounds like from the article. The first would make sense: if the DVD manufacturer is violating a contract, then that's wrong. The second is more controversial. But as for the third, surely it would not be illegal for a person operating a VCR to have a sheet of paper with a bunch of time codes, and to fast forward appropriately according to the sheet. And if it would be OK for a person to do it, why would it be wrong for the person to deputize a machine to do it?)
Those of us in education feel quite free to show clips from rented videos. Our university counsel has no objection as far as I know (I queried about my own classroom practises). But the fast-forward thing just is the same kind of thing--just think of a bunch of clips.
(Next they'll want to prohibit me from turning my head away from a scene I don't want to watch!)
But they aren't copying or distributing the movie!
It is more like if someone invented a pair of glasses which blotted out every cuss word in a book. Silly? Yes, illegal? No!
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
Maybe somebody else remembers this, but back when DVD players were first coming into the consumer marketplace, one the selling points was that there would be a system in place to do exactly this! At the beginning of the movie you could decide if you wanted to watch a R, PG-13, or whatever version. I remember being quite excited at the time because then I would finally be able to convince my parents to let me watch all those big bad R-rated films. I never actually saw a DVD with this system, but I do dostinctly remember the makers touting it.
How far will we let them go?
First they came for the DeCSS nerds, and I did not speak out - because I was not a nerd.
Then they came for the modchippers, and I did not speak out - because I was not a modchipper.
Then they came for the Tivo/Replay users, and I did not speak out - because I didn't have one.
Then they came for the people who skipped parts of movies, and I did not speak out because I didn't watch movies.
Then they came for those who didn't want to watch the movie at all.
And by that time there was no one left to speak out for me.