Slashdot Mirror
Auto-Censoring DVD Player
Gogl writes "Those clever folks at RCA have apparently designed a DVD player that automatically scans movies and censors them to make them kosher, as it were. That means none of the naughty bits and none of those bad words either. It will be sold by Walmart for the price of $79, and what with the recent Janet Jackson 'wardrobe malfunction' this product will likely be lauded by the FCC and moralists everywhere, though Hollywood is already complaining."
Damn those dumb people, why are they taking the b00bies away from me???
What, are these corporations my MOTHER or something now??
just what i want for my birthday!! GET THE FILTH OUT!
I think this is an unauthorized making of a derivative work, and as such should be actionable under the DMCA. As a matter of fact, distribution of this player should be as well.
Where do you get *your* entropy?
Not a flame, but don't post AC; I'd like to learn more about folks like you, what makes you tick, what your thought processes are.
Your reasoning seems to be so alien that I feel the need to understand what your background is that leads you to your conclusions.
Stupid thing... it's censoring all of my cookery instruction DVDs. It's blocked out an apple and banana, both of the melons, and a saveloy.
to start the trend early.. if you were watching a DVD of that awful performance (and wardrobe malfunction) of Janet Jackson would it have captured and censored it? Probably not.
I pray to almighty Jesus that all the gun-fighting and blood spray will be unaffected.
I just KNOW there's going to be a hack out for it soon, that will enable to user to reverse the process and skip to just the naughty bits and swear words. =)
Does it have a database of boobies to match against or something?
Will this be like the web-censoring software that prohibits users from visiting the Scunthrope United soccer team website, or the Essex County College website?
Sounds like the V-Chip in the televisions but only a step further. As long as the technology does not go any further, I do not see any real problems with this. This would be good for parents with young children. I can see the potential for industry abuse for this in the future.
Do you want to watch what you want? Or do you want Hollywood to have total control? This is especially good for children and watching otherwise great movie with a few objectionable scenes.
Filters out the boring crap and goes straight for the neekidness and cussing?
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
So now we have to depend on the processor in a $79 piece of asiaware to correctly detect and 'bleep' or otherwise censor dirty words? Please. This reminds me of the so-called "web censoring software" that looked for images with sufficient pixels in the color range of human flesh, and 'decided' that it was pr0n. It had a false positive rate = false negative rate.
Here's a suggestion to all you Concerned Parents: Stop foisting the responsibility of raising your children onto other people. Watch TV with your kids. Know what they watch. Heck, buy them books instead.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
now all my porn's gonna be more broke up than eminem on cable..
how would this thing even work? figuring out what should be censored out cant exactly be calculated on-the-fly as the movie is playing. clearly, it looks like there's a subscription service at work here whereby the box identifies the disc inserted, and calls in to find out what should and should not be shown.
curious that it's RCA that came up with this device. They're also a record label. Looks like this could shape up into an interesting showdown between heavyweights.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
Even at $79 , how many of those do they actually expect to sell?
The same type that blocks Knoppix.org because it contains the word "pix"? Most likely. There's only so much accuracy one can achieve with a "flesh coloured pixel" count. Chances are it'll end up blocking things like scenes in rooms with wallpaper who's colour resembles human skin - after all, it's a screenfull of human flesh coloured pixels - it must be offensive o.0
This is as much of a censorship story as me saying "Mozilla Thunderbird sucks as a newsreader because it lacks a good killfile".
This is a device being sold on the market. Censorship is a word used in reference to a Government office and Government behavior. There is a difference. RCA cannot force you to use its player or punish you for not meeting its standards through capture or violence.
"automatically scans movies and censors them to make them kosher"
Time to throw out my copy of Babe: Pig in the City.
Actually, it was time to do that years ago...
It sounds like they have some type of database that stores what content to censor for a particular movie. I wonder how they are going to keep this databse up to date for new movies? It seems this would only work for DVD's and not live TV.
A Hollywood consortium, including some of Tinseltown's top directors, has sued Clearplay and others, arguing that they are abusing the films' artistic integrity.
Ah, yes. The artistic integrity of, say, the excessive violence in 48 hours? Or, perhaps, the gratiuitous nudity in American Pie.
STFU, morons. 99.9% of Hollywood's tripe is about as artistic as my ass after a binge at Taco Bell.
If people want to screen a movie they paid to see, that's their perogative. An excellent application for this is to effectively turn a "questionable for children" movie into something that you, as a parent, feel is sanitized enough to show your children.
Wake me up if some idiot starts mandating this technology in ALL players. Until then, this is just an interesting technology that people can choose to use if they want. Yawn.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Anyway, I think the biggest benefit of this product is for children. Kids end up watching stuff that, personally, I find offensive. I think parents should have an easy of keeping kids from being bombarded constantly with offensive material. It seems like our culture is producing way more crap these days.
If our kids watch crap all the time, what do you think will happen to them?
"Subscribers can then watch standard copies of the 500-or-so films on its list." It sounds like they're just pre-screening films and making a database of their findings. Pretty low-tech.
If parents want to censor their kids, fine. If this type of thing were mandated, then I'd be pissed.
It's a product with a market: parents who don't want their kids to see nudity and hear filthy mouths, such as my own (my parents didn't use such devices haha.)
Derek Greene
Seriously, Clearplay doesn't check what what scenes are crucial to the understanding of the movie. Take Solaris for example. Many of "ipiphony" scenes for the characters included Clooney flashing his ass. Had I seen the movie without these scenes, as difficult as they were to watch to begin with, the movie would have been rendered incomprehensible.
I think it's a Good Thing(tm).
The problem comes when someone else tries to impose his/her morals on ME. By censoring DVDs at source, that is what happens. This player, OTOH, brings censoring to the destination. Great idea.
This is a good thing. Back in the day - I wanted our english/journalism class in high school to see "Shawshank Redemption" but we couldn't because of the language. If this DVD player would have been around - we'd have been able to watch it and watch "glory" in History class as well.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
You must be new here.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I put a copy of Pulp Fiction into this thing, and all I got out were 13 seconds of credits! Where did my movie go???
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
the fundamentalist pacifist is the worst of all.
A religious movie comes out where the producer makes up scenes that inspire bigotry and the movie is about two hours of nothing about a man being beaten to a pulp. CVS airs the superbowl, refuses to take a commercial asking people to vote for someone other then bush, but they gladly take pro bush commercials. No one complains.......hardly The majority of the 6 plus billion people on this planet have breasts and those who don't have seen them. A woman's nipple is exposed on television and the earth in the United States is shaken!
Nuff said.
Besides, it will butcher movies, not replace the content with milder cuss words like on TV. If you have ever watched Malaysian TV you will know exactly what it will do. Entire chunks of film will simply disappear leaving an incoherent mess in its place. Imagine (trying) to watch something like Pulp Fiction through it for example.
People who buy this are idiots and following on from its DIVX fiasco it is more proof that RCA really doesn't have a clue.
Of course something good might come out of it. If all the god bothering prudes equip themselves with one of these, it will leave Blockbuster et al with no excuse for not stocking certain titles.
First they came for stern
Then the came for the porn (news article not porn link, fyi)
Now they sell "self correcting DVD players" (how long till you can only buy those?)
*shrug* where's our first amendment now, biach!?
E.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
WHY is it unacceptable for children to see people making love (fucking, if you prefer), but it's okay if they see people killing each other with firearms.
What the f... ?
Parents and owners of these things are simply decided what they do and do not want their familty to see. Are you saying that I must allow my young children to watch nudity, violence, and bad language or else I am some kind of fundamentalist?
These are tools for parents, nothing more, nothing less. Last I knew parents were allowed to raise their own children. Yeah- censorship is bad, for grown adults, but I plan on censoring the heck out of what I allow my children to see. There is no freedom of speech or freedom to view anything for a 9 year old.
Another way to look at this is as a tool of free speech. It allows parents to further control what their children see whild not forcing entire censorship. I would like to continue to watch movies as my daughter gets old enough to understand what she is seeing on the screen. Most of the time sex scenes and foul language does little to add to the story (I know there are exceptions, like Boogie Nights, for example).
Anyway, just my two cents-- there is no reason to freak out here. RCA and Walmart aren't trying to censor what you are allowed to see, rather, they are providing parents with a tool that will help us to raise our children as we see fit.
[FromTheMorning]
Imagine the experience of sitting down with a few porn DVD's. The pool cleaner guy knocks on the door. The young wife answers, and lets him in to have a glass of water. The movie ends. The freshman coed comes to her professor's office hour to ask about making up a test. The movie ends. The girl trying out for cheerleader camp meets with the two head cheerleaders to go over a dance routine. The movie ends. It'd be minimalist cinema of the kind not seen since Warhol.
I have 3 kids, and I don't let them watch most of the crap I watch anyway, sex/violence or not. Nudity is okay, (hey, we were born that way,) but explaining to a 5 year old why two people are naked and wrestling is rather uncomfortable. As is explaining why people are getting shot, etc.
However, I would rather just not let them watch those kind of movies until they are old enough to understand them, or at least old enough to understand my explanations of them. (HAHA!) I'd rather not use a machine to do what I consider to be my job- filtering the world for my children until they are ready to experience it full blast.
Good luck to them!
Oh, and it only works with the "500 or so" films on the Clearplay list.
Whichever Hollywood consortium is suing these guys, they're idiots. "Effectively pirating" their work. Christ. If people buy this product, it's because they want sex and violence OUT of the movies they watch. i.e., they don't want what you're giving them. How about developing DVDs yourselves that have kid-friendly versions of popular movies instead of just suing anyone who beats you to the idea?
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
But this player sure sounds like skipping over a portion of the content, rather than "fast forwarding" over the content.
In my opinion, their analogy sounds grossly incorrect.
Hey, that's my password you are typing
If I should be allowed to watch whatever I want then it doesn't seem unreasonable for others to view the same thing edited to their tastes. It's not like I would have to watch the edited version -- I get to choose on the exact same DVD. Hopefully RCA will have enough sense to make it a per-viewing option (even if it defaults to censored). If not, then they better hope I never purchase one as it will go right back to the store.
Also, "artistic integrity" only goes so far. One may have the right to say anything one likes, but noone should be required to listen to it. And if that means that only parts of one's message gets out to some folks, while everyone can choose to listen all of it, I think that this is perfectly fine. Let the individual adult viewer choose. If the artist wants to make sure everyone hears the entire message then it seems to me that it's up to the artist to make the entire message palletable.
This is the best answer to the "broadcast decency" discussion, and one can only hope that this will become more widespread.
If you read the article, this is a (subscription?) service offered by the company, who SCREEN movies and flag parts of a DVD as "contains nudity", "contains strong language" etc.
The *user* can then chose to skip those scenes.
This is *exactly* how it should work. Put everything in the dvd, and if a viewer doesn't like watching nude scenes, or swear words, he can chose to skip over those parts.
Instead of forcing ClearChannel, Viacom and other ``public'' broadcast stations to censor their content to the lowest common denominator, let the users worry about filtering out the crap they don't want to see.
Now we only need a radio that has the Howard Stern (and similar) broadcasting schedule and stations programmed, with a button to skip over them, and then those FCC "complaints" will become irrelevant -- just tell the users to turn on their filter.
You let it scan the movie before hand and only then when it has the data stored will it work.
I think this is going to contribute further to the decline of human society. Parents already all-too-often put on a TV show and plop the kids down in front without knowing what they're really watching. Now, parents are going to throw in one of those pre-screned DVD's, and assume its safe and appropriate for their children, without actually watching it first and making sure.
Happy Jesus Killing Day!
Is this really OT?...
Sadly, I believe the parent is correct, even though it is expressed in the form of a troll.
How does it work? Does the DVD contain information on where the inappropriate contents are? If so then, will it work on older DVDs as well?
Activists United
Why is this flamebait?
The parent was referring to modifying somebodies intellectual property without their permission. That is covered by the DMCA. Why do you think Hollywood hates the idea of these things? They consider themselves artists and artists don't like it when other people start changing their work. If you don't like it then don't look at it or watch it -- but don't change it.
The parent raises a valid point about how stupid the DMCA is too. It would cover this in theory. Overreaching law or good thing? His comment was not flamebait.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I would appreciate a version that can remove all scenes with Ben Afflick in them.
Sincerely,
J. Lo.
Back in school, 10 or 15 years ago, I had just begun learning english.. and the english teacher showed us this movie, hiding subtitles.
;-)
Of course at the end I had NO IDEA of what really happened in the movie. Who the characters were, etc...
But I knew ONE thing for SURE : the f-word is the most important word in the american (maybe not english) language
I think if people want to watch something devoid of extremity, they should simply find movies that don't have this stuff in them in the first place. I mean - can you imagine how Incredibly Stupid 'Requium For A Dream" would seem if any scenes with drug use, sex, or violence were skipped? And yet its an incredibly touching film, and one that I shared with my 60 year old mother, who loved it.
Maybe its because I try not to watch bad movies, but I am a firm beleiver in artistic license... and if a GOOD director thinks there is a reason for me to see some sort of provocative scene, I'm going to assume it has an important part of the story, and shouldn't be skipped. Mind you, I don't really watch TV, but it seems that the gratuitous stuff you see on there probably has no point but ratings.
I grew up in a house where I saw some pretty intense films at a fairly early age. I had a parent that would discuss the films with me, and I never felt violated by anything I saw. Remember that anything that is hidden from us, we generally end up coveting. This kind of 'feature' could end up doing more harm than good.
I wonder why americans seem to find the human body so offensive...
this is the stupidest (happy mountains) i have ever heard of in my whole (dancing kittens) life
what (singing birds) thought this (rolling hills) up?
if you don't like the (grazing deer) movie, don't watch the (blooming flowers) movie!
cutting it up into sanitized (falling rain) pieces is akin to giving yourself a (bubbling brooks) frontal lobotomy
i just don't understand the (belching volcanoes) censorial instincts of some pinheaded (churning lava)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Clearplay scans movies for dodgy content, and then programs that data into its system.
Subscribers can then watch standard copies of the 500-or-so films on its list, with the assurance that they will automatically skip over mute anything that children or the squeamish may not like.
Until now, Clearplay has only run through a PC.
It does not use a heuristic. Clearplay has already screened the movie previously for offensive content and preprogrammed actions (i.e. skipping or bleeping).
Personally I don't like the idea of people trusting other people's judgment on what their kids should or shouldn't see in a movie. Seems a little Big Brother'ish.
I'm sure many parents will love this though. Now they can just sit their kids in front of the tube and not worry their little heads over whether their kids are seeing inappropriate material.
It's partly the fault of societal pressures (i.e. monetary), but really, what's the point of having kids if you just ignore them after they reach age 4 (sometimes even earlier?).
Just like in the movie, but now the little prist sits in your DVD player. Cool!
Just like that little gnome who sits in your fridge and turns the light off when you shut the door.
first the v-chip in tvs, now the 'v-chip' in dvds...
l ?tid=153
even v-chips on the internet, like netnanny and whatnot.
if people want censored stuff, let em have it.
btw, this EXACT SAME COMPANY was posted on slashdot before http://slashdot.org/articles/03/01/30/229250.shtm
Sorry, you've violated Schernau's 2nd Law - anyone who signs a slashdot post with a real name to provide credibility automatically loses it.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
hmmm... but I must say, the world would be a safer, brighter place if it were not for all us people devoted to peace.
-sloptaco
Why is this flamebait?
Because nothing is being "made" or "modified." The DVD is untouched. And regardless, if I own a magazine or a book, I can tear out pages that offend me, and yes I can still sell it afterwards.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
The great boon of digital technology is that the media consumer need not just be a passive receiver. He can control his artistic experience and even modify it. It's not like painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa, it's just a copy. The original is left unsulied. This needs to be protected in the same way editing Jar Jar Binks out of Star Wars prequels is. Besides, the next time somebody whines Hollywood is too sexy or violent, you can tell them to shut their pie holes and buy a self-censoring DVD player.
Oh, and you don't =like= what it is they are editing? Well who made you the moral arbiter of the universe?
Besides, Hollywood has been acquiescing to the demands of commercial television for "clean" versions for decades. They've got =nothing= to say about "artistic integrity".
Just give the enduser the ability to censor, and leave the original signal/movie untouched. Example: When the little tikes are in the room, switch to G rated, when they leave, switch to whatever rating you want. Heck, maybe with this tech, you could have a setting to make it all "Naughty-Bits". I don't see it as censorship if it's selectable by the end-user then it's selective viewing. The problem comes in when/if you are mandated to keep the settings at a certain level, or required to have it self-censor. Beyond that, this could help eliminate censorship at the original broadcast.
www.facebook.com/DareDefendOurRights
www.fairtax.org
A DVD player than can make "Star Wars Episode I & II" Jar-Jar Free for everyone!
Yeah!
were slashdot employing the same filtering technology as this dvd player, methinks that fine image might not make the final cut
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Am I the only one who read "The DVD player scans for doggy content"?
C'mon, man! Doggy style is a beautiful act!
I watch 5 hours of tv a day and... ooo, a bird.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
a DVD player that automatically scans movies and censors them to make them kosher
I only buy movies prepared under rabbinical supervision.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
Does this make Greedo shoot first with his walkie-talkie?
Reviews with a twist! http://www.sardonicbastard.com
During the ensuing uproar, which the boys assume will be about the injured Butters, it turns out people are more bothered by seeing an eight year old boy naked.
I talk about stuff.
Of course, you can still pay some homeless guy to get you into the next Terence and Phillip movie. It looks like it's going to be cool. They were dressed up like cowboys...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
What is not mentioned is how the DVD player is implemented. On the PC, filter files for all movies are already stored, and internet connections are only needed for updates. Could an $80 DVD player, which is about the same cost of a normal RCA player, have enough memory to do this? Will a connection be needed for every movie?
The critical part for most people is going to be the $80 a year fee to use the technology. Also, only about 500 standard movies have been edited. I wonder if you buy a special edition reedit, and it isn't in the database, will Walmart accept the return on the open package. I think they should on the grounds it is defective.
Also, looking at the database of movies, it's a wonder there is any content left.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
re: books: If you tear off the cover, you can't sell them.
re: DVD: *agreed*; this is certainly fair use. Having this set as precedent, might make it easier to argue for backup copies/weakening of the DMCA.
Censor language and sexual content for personal viewing = abuse of artistic integrity
Censor language and sexual content for made-for-TV version = $$$
I don't understand what everyone is pissing and moaning about here. All of the derogatory remarks about people who would rather not see explicit sexuality, or listen to profanity are uncalled for. This is a device a private citizen will purchase to use at home in private. It is not being forced on you, it is not technology mandated by the government to censor your viewing.
/., I am amazed to see the anti religion zealots complaining about what the see as a lame product. If there really is no demand, and it is a bad idea, nobody will buy it and it will disappear.
If you want to see these movies uncensored, then don't by this product. For all the free market pontificating done on
Nifty little device for parents with pre-teens with more tech know-how than their parents. Some people after all rather care how their children are raised.
ClearPlay is the service that scans the movies and determines what will be cut out. The player (I think) phones home and checks on each DVD.
Their current list of movies and what they cuy out is here.
For instance:
Alien - 1979
Blood & Gore
Before:Extreme
After: Minor
Profanity
Before: Moderate
After: None
Sex & Nudity
Before:Moderate
After: None
Violence
Before Heavy
After: Moderate
The blood and gore in Alien was a crucial part of the horror movie. Take those out, and it's much less of a horror experience.
Now there is *NO EXCUSE* for banning profanity or porn from mainstream TV.
peace
"/Dread"
ps Can I get a hack for a violence and neo-con speak repeller?
Maybe my memory is faulty, but wasn't this originally supposed to be a selling point for DVDs waaaay back when? Selectable MPAA ratings? What would be wrong with a DVD that comes with the original (lets say "R") version of a movie as well as an encoded list of all of the content in the movie that needs to be bleeped/cut/etc. to make it PG-13, PG, etc. You can then select which version of the movie you watch from the DVD menu.
Now granted, the article sounds like this feature is implemented at the player level, but assuming it is accurate (and it can be turned off by the owner of the player of course), what is the problem with this? I'm not a parent now, but if I am at some point, I would love this feature.
Nice quotes from directors and scholars (if I do say so myself...)
l a- 121601dvd.story?coll=la-home-todays-times
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/
So because it's fair use the DMCA doesn't apply? I think the grandparent was trying to point out the insanity of the DMCA. Don't go calling flamebait what you can't understand.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
So, if I cue up just the car chase in "Streets of San Fancisco," or maybe just the rescue of Morpheus in "The Matrix" without actually watching the movies in their entirety, am I violating the rights of the artistic creators?
If not, how is it any different if I'm a puritanical old biddy who wants to watch "Eyes Wide Shut" with a DVD player that automatically skips over the orgy scene? Or "Clockwork Orange" without the rape scenes? Granted, "Clockwork Orange" would be a very short movie if you took the sex and violence out, but if somebody really just wants to watch Malcome MacDowell extoll the joys of drinking "milk plus" for 10 minutes, that should be up to them.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Now I know why my DVD of the Passion of the Christ is only 5 minutes long. The Walmart DVD cut out all the violent pieces.
Look I understand if you don't want to buy one of these thing, that's fine. But why is the fact that this is available on the market make this a censorship issue?
Some people don't subscribe to HBO because they don't like the things that are shown. Are they censoring HBO? Well, I guess if you twist the meaning of the word "censor". But is it unreasonable? Of course not! An individuals right to decide (for themselves) whether or not they want to view something isn't censorship, it's freedom of choice.
As far as this particular device, if you don't like it's feature set, don't buy it. But, who's being the censor if, because you don't like the feature set, you prevent someone else from buying it?
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
So when you buy a film/music you buy a disc and not the contents? I wondered how "blank" managed to top the album charts.
Seriously, if I alter a transmission I am modifying it, pass cd audio through a filter, surround decoder of DA converter and I am modifying it. The DMCA is bullshit but that doesn't make the OP flamebait, its the letter of the law!
This is much better than just banning all movies that have sexually explicit scenes.
Think it can't happen?Ashcroft disagrees
I personally think this is great. If somebody wants to watch a show and not see those scenes then this just makes easier on them what they'll already do (fast forward).
I have always wanted to find a way to personally edit DVD's to remove content that would be objectionable - that way, as my children grow older, I could create new versions that introduces the stuff back in. No reason to have some corp. body controlling the 'censored' content of my dvd's. Any thoughts on the DVD editing? Thanks
Wow, now remind me, what country do I live in now? Afghanistan? no.....Iran? no. Oh wait that's right I live in the free society of America.....wow I almost forgot!
This is a good idea because it will demonstrate to the general public exactly what DRM means. While its totally up to them to buy this (and aslong as its clearly advertised) it will show them how media can be controlled by telling a device what to do. Maybe when more harsh controls come in - such as "you cant record this" the public will think "hey wait a minute, why cant i buy a box that can record anything? what gives anyone the right to tell us what we can and cannot buy?"
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I want a DVD player that takes a regular PG-13 movie and adds back in all the naughty bits that the MPAA board made the filmmakers edit out to avoid an R rating.
That would rock.
Finally, I'd be able to sit through entire viewing of Steel Magnolias with the wife!
Umm, actually no you can't. Haven't you ever seen a book with the warning about selling it without the cover?
Legality aside I don't think it's justifiable to edit a piece of artwork. Whether or not you are actually editing it or using digital technology to do it is beside the point. If you are going to look at a piece of art then you look at it as the artist intended. Are you going to buy software to edit out offensive images of the Sistine Chapel next? If it bothers you or if it's just plain tasteless (and I won't deny that a ton of stuff that comes out of Hollywood falls into this category) then don't watch it.
As for the "What about the kids" arguments that will follow: Technology is not a substitute for parenting. Perhaps if you watched movies with your kids and explained to them what was going on they'd be in a better position to understand the World. If it falls into the tasteless category then again don't watch it.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I applaud your principles, but wonder if they've not blinded you to satire.
;-)
A transient copy of the content is made in memory, and it is this niggling detail is at the root of all this fuss over digital media, sharing, et al. Remember, the copyright law had to be ammended to cover computer software precisely because of transient copies and backup media. Under the classical interpretation, running a computer program, which necessarily entails making a copy of the copyrighted work in RAM, violates the law except as permitted under a license.
I see what you're saying and I agree with your basic premise. However, in the eyes of plenty of recent law, I tihnk the original poster is on the money. This is exactly the kind of thing the DMCA might be invoked against. I'd personally like to see it happen because the likely bad outcome for the DVD publishers would be one more bitch slap to that bad law.
Oh, and remind me to never buy a book from you!
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
"Mom, would you rather i see a movie thats rated 'R' for violence, or see a porno?"
And although unbeknownst to her i've seen both, she says she hasn't cared about r movies for years. Then i asked the follow up..."Ok, would you rather i kill someone or have sex?"
She didn't answer me and then i proceeded to point out how out of whack our country's general moral compass is."Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Great, all my movies are going to be of the Pizza boy showing up at the girls dorm (skip forward ~20 minutes) the Police Officer pulling over the very attractive woman for speeding (skips forward ~15 minutes). I sure won't play any of my home movies (wink,wink), I don't need it skipping ahead 5 minutes.
From what I gather from the article, this device doesn't actually scan the content, but instead has a list of movies which it checks against. Movie on the list? Here's where the bad parts are, filter them out. Not on the list? Guess you're stuck with the fast forward button. I imagine some squeamish high moral type in Salt Lake City is forced to watch all the smut and flag the naughty bits.
Seriously, how effective is a 500 movie list? There must be 10,000 movies out there (that figure from the hip), does this machine help any with the others? The word "subscribers" appears in the article, makes me think that you have to pay for the updated naughty part database. How is such content delivered? How are people duped into buying this thing at Wal-Mart going to feel when they have to subscribe to the service AND pay an ISP to get more movies filtered?
Seems to me that the rating system on TV shows and movies are adequate if parents are paying attention. This seems aimed at those who let the TV babysit their kids, and it's just a security blanket for parents at that. Does anyone really think you can prevent today's technologically adept kids from finding a way to see naughty content? Especially those parents who would buy such a device?
This is why: In the TV version, the kid would be somewhere with Bruce, and all of a sudden, he would be looking really scared. My g.f. saw the movie and told me that he just saw some really gross dead people. I had just imagine "really gross" dead people everytime the kid looked scared. I thought the movie sucked based on the TV version.
I'd love to see it. It might just blow up the player.
OK, the producers of this "specially designed (enforced censorship)" DVD player are essentially:
1. Selling a DVD player with less ability.
2. Providing an excuse for privacy zealots to froth at the mouth.
Remember a basic of capitalism: If a demand exists, a market will be created to fill the demand. A group that desires watered-down media has identified itself in this country. (Consisting largely of proto-fundo-wacko christians.)
Is it a wonder that this product has appeared?
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
It seems like every film director feels compelled to throw in a sex/nude scene, and the film will be rated R, but only for "violence".
Case in point: the movie Basic, starring John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson. I liked the movie, billed as a "military suspense thriller." What I didn't like was a scene near the end, apparently during a Mardi Gras parade, where a completely topless woman was shown from the front. What the hell? In my opinion, that's not appropriate for my boys to be watching.
There are many good movies out there that barring a few scenes, would be perfectly acceptable for my children to watch. A device like this should allow my family to watch and enjoy these movies.
Typos... that's just how I role.
If a human being went through each movie and personally selected each "offensive scene", then the problem is that one person's idea of offensive may not be another person's. If it's an automated thing that searches for certain elements & automatically labels them obscene, then there's a whole new can of worms. Software does a crappy job of understanding nuance. Hence, Dick Van Dyke becomes Jerk Van Gay. I mean, what's it going to do with a "How to Breastfeed" instructional video?
Rubbish!
From dictionary.com...that talks on a regular basis to an invisible man who lives in the sky called "Jesus".
I wonder how long "Debbie Does Dallas" would run on this player? 2 minutes?
Opening credits...closing credits.
(Time to burn up some Karma)
Slashdotters are so funny.
Most of us are all about Open Source (as in Free Speech, and oftimes Free Beer). But when a product comes out that will give its users more control over what it plays, slashdotters cry foul. "Censorship! Mayhem! People that want to have a little control over what their children see and hear are uptight idiots!"
This has nothing to do with copyrights. It has everything to do with making fun of people who recognize that what we and our children watch affect us. Is it censorship if you rip pages out of book YOU own?
Nope. And neither is this RCA DVD player.
Consider the daffodil. And while you're doing that, I'll be over here, looking through your stuff.
Explain precisely what "anti-piracy measures" this device is attempting to circumvent. The DMCA, nasty little beast that it is, is not the whole of modern copyright law, and by losing sight of that fact, you're playing the part of Joe Average Slashdotter.
Now, if DVDs suddenly started including "ButtBlaster" technology to ensure that people couldn't fast forward through the racy bits, and this DVD player had to bypass that technology, then the DMCA would be perfectly applicable.
As it stands, this thing is nothing but an automatic fast-forwarder, and I would hate to be the judge who made it illegal to skip parts of a movie. He'd most likely be getting a dead cat in his mailbox.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
So, if I cue up just the car chase in "Streets of San Fancisco," or maybe just the rescue of Morpheus in "The Matrix" without actually watching the movies in their entirety, am I violating the rights of the artistic creators?
;-)
If not, how is it any different if I'm a puritanical old biddy who wants to watch "Eyes Wide Shut" with a DVD player that automatically skips over the orgy scene?
Well, its different in the sense that you want to only watch the good bits and she's missing out on the only good bit...
You can't take the sky from me...
So whats the censorship here. I can take a black magic marker and get rid of all the bits of my books I dont like. Thats not censorship. So whats the hoopla here about buying a device to do that for movies that I own. Thats not censorship. Thats me using my things the way I want to.
Today is a gift. Save the receipt.
I haven't seen this in the discussions anywhere, but if you actually RTFA (okay I know that excludes most of us), it uses the ClearPlay technology to identify the sexually-explicit parts of the movie to cut out. But couldn't a creative geek modify the thing so that it plays *only* the sexually explicit parts? Then you dont have to watch all of Basic Instict just to see Sharon Stone naked a few times. IMHO, this would be a good thing.
I clicked on both sites, but couldn't get in. They require that you be 18 or over, and ask for a credit card number.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
> Umm, actually no you can't. Haven't you ever seen a book with the warning about selling it without the cover?
But he's not talking about the cover, he's talking about ripping out pages. Ripping off the cover has special meaning, it means tha the publisher receives no money from the sale. Ripping out pages does not mean the same thing.
I do not see why anyone is offended by this. You will not be forced to buy that DVD Player. I do find it odd though I have an extremly liberal friend and he would of course rage about this and probably will. yet his daughter likes veggietales so he buys the videos and edits out the "Christian" content but that is okay.
How is choice wrong? How is this any different than skipping a song you do not like on a cd? Isn't freedom about choice?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
They only people for who it is illegal to sell the coverless books are the book stores who have signed an agreement with the book distributor that say instead of sending back the complete book they can send back just the front cover and they will destroy the book.
In the book themselves some just have a warning that if the book it is a missing the front cover it could of been illegally sold, and for the would-be purchases not to buy it. As a purchasers I am under no legal requirement, just a moral one.
Like anything else in life, there needs to be balance. I honestly don't think a censoring DVD player is a major threat because it's not part of the international specifications for DVDs. If the DVD player was legislated, THEN it would be bad.
But before you go and blame fundamentalist Christians for this, look rationally for a moment. There's still choice in the store to buy a normal DVD player of international specifications. You can still watch R-rated movies in the theater with graphic depictions of sex and violence. There have been regimes that were officially atheist that have banned such films in the past in the name of information control, and those atheist regimes were very extreme (read: Communism).
Therefore, don't be so bold to blame something that is really a choice at this point on a religion. Until the government legislates this change, don't get your panties in such a bunch. Government isn't even involved in this decision yet.
No one said it was. Your typical movie with shooting in it will not be rated G, same with your typical movie with sex in it. You can complain about violence on tv, as I'm sure the followup to this will be someone harping about that, but you'll notice that all of the tv shows have that little maturity rating on it that tv's with the vchip on it will not allow to be shown.
Its amusing how everyone will see a story like this and automatically start whining about censorship and drag Bush into it, for whatever weird logic they have for that, while it was Clinton who signed the VChip thing into law, and it was Al Gore's wife who started putting parental advisory labels on cds. Liberals do have notoriously short memories, though.
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Theatrical Release: 5/2/2003
Runtime: 134 minutes
Blood & Gore:
Before: Heavy After: Moderate
Profanity:
Before: Heavy After: None
Sex & Nudity:
Before: Heavy After: Moderate
Violence:
Before: Heavy After: Moderate
My first thought is "X2? What nudity?"
My second thought though is that this company is made up of people who think "Sex, violence, blood, no problem. But profanity? I'll pray for your souls, you potty-mouthed bastards!"
-T
Derivative works are covered by the "standard" copyright legislation, not the DMCA - and the DMCA makes no distinction on matters of fair use (which is exactly what it's detractors complain about: making a copy of YOUR cd to ply in YOUR car is certainly fair use, but if you circumvent copy protection to do so, it's actionable under the DMCA anyways)
I've tried out some of that web-censoring software. While some of it, like you are implying, is utter crap, most of it is user-configurable.
Let me say that again: user-configurable. You have choices whether to block certain types of words, certain combinations of words, certain sites, etc.
If you find a dumb site being blocked, complain to the admin of the software for your local system, not about the software itself.
Ironic, isnt it, that hollywood is bitching at a technology that limits peoples rights and uses. Maybe if they wake up they will realize that it does not end here...
In the book themselves some just have a warning that if the book it is a missing the front cover it could of been illegally sold, and for the would-be purchases not to buy it. As a purchasers I am under no legal requirement, just a moral one.
That's why you tear out the warning too, then poof no legal OR moral issue.
for actual parenting.
If you want to watch a movie with your kids, perhaps you shouldn't watch a movie where all the violence and swear-words are implied, left to the child's imagination.
It's hard to imagine the kid not knowing that violence exists. They will pick up on what should happen when those bits are censored out.
Perhaps, if you want to sit down and watch a family movie, you should just watch a family movie.
Is it possible to use DMCA and/or intelectual property rights, such as copyright to prosecute censoring? It would be cool.
There you are, staring at me again.
Finally, a tool for those born again christians to completely seperate themselves from the real world. I wonder if such a sensor could be built into pvr devices and deployed (also through walmart). Just think what the evening news would look like in Kentucky.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
OK, folks its time to quit asking every one BUT YOURSELFS to be your mommy!
You want the goverment to censor this, censor that. You want your DVD player to censor this and that too! Please.
The education system in this country is nothing more than a glorified babysitting service, so mom can hang out at the mall or the country club or what have you. If you didn't want the responsability of a child and actually PARENTING the child then you should have taken measures to not had [a] kid[s] in the first place!
Its is NOT the goverments or soceity in general responsability to do your parenting.
If you purchased a DVD that contains lanquage that is not suitable for you or your rugrats then why did you purchase or rent it? ? DVD players should not be ADDING in more DRM crap!
If the movie/show on the DVD is that offensive to you then maybe YOU should NOT be watching it anyway. Leave it for the ADULTS of soceity to watch.
Parenting requires INVOLMENT and guess what that means you need to know what your deliquents are doing and watching on TV, radio, internet etc.. It also means YOU the PARENT need to TEACH THEM that some things are shown on a DVD are not considered proper lanquage.
Just like this crap over Janet Jackson, Howard Stern, Bubba the Love Sponge et al.. I don't really care for any of them. I don't care that one bared her breast on TV. As far as I am concerned more power to her!
This country is SERIOUSLY BEHIND the times on broadcast & media free speech as compared to the rest of the world. Its time to get over it! If you don't like whats being said or shown on the radio or TV CHANGE THE CHANNEL or TURN IT OFF!
Use YOUR BRAIN and quit asking the government, or any one else, to be a Censor Nanny.
1311393600 - Back to Black
Right.... That's why women in the USA are forced to wear coverings that only reveal their hands and eyes. That's why anyone caught having sex outside of marriage is stoned (in the ancient sense of that term) to death. That's why Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson will declare you an infidel for speaking such things and will encourage Christians everywhere to kill you ala Salman Rushdie (sp?).
If you don't like Christians, fine, but in this case AC must stand for Anal Comparison.
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
I don't care if they make this player, but it seems kind of redundant. Unless you're not into parenting, I guess.
Also, why do the Artists object to playing of an edited movie for sex/language/etc., but allow them to be released in full screen? To me that and other things they don't object to affect the movie a lot more than this DVD player.
or else you're doing it wrong
...this does not do anything with the work that you're not already allowed to do. With the proper fast forward/skip & mute buttons, you could do the exact same thing already. In fact, I would consider it a lot safer since it does not modify the actual copy itself, just the presentation of it.
Presentation is my choice. I can watch in on a b/w television, with the sound muted, or I can turn past a page in the newspaper. That does not violate any copyright law. Even the most 1984esque sections of the DMCA were designed to prevent copyright violations (including tools and information that could lead to such), not to control the presentation.
If the presented work was recaptured (b/w, muted or missing a page), it would be a derivative work and thus subject to copyright law. But since that is not the case, the DMCA should not apply. Next thing you know, it'll be illegal to see a movie wearing shades or with earplugs...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Well, it's a good thing Matsushita markets their wares as Sony. Imagine what the promo for their version of ClearPlay would be like:
"The filtering technology was brought to you by MatsushitFZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT..."
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
In fact, anyone who read the article would have read this:
A Hollywood consortium, including some of Tinseltown's top directors, has sued Clearplay and others, arguing that they are abusing the films' artistic integrity.
By producing - without permission - altered versions of intellectual property, censors are effectively pirating directors' and studios' work, the lawsuit argues.
Clearplay hopes to escape through a loophole: instead of making new versions of films, it argues, its technology is simply another way of playing the existing movie - no more an abuse than a viewer fast-forwarding a tape in his own home.
The case is pending, but RCA has decided to press ahead regardless.
While the article does not mention exactly which statutes they are suing under, the fact that they are taking legal action ought to count towards something, here.
(It also seems possible that they actually are suing under the DMCA, but I don't have enough information to confidently conclude that.)
I didn't read it, but I'm pretty sure you're an idiot.
See only the boobies and violence! You could basically invert the scene-skipping data and only watch the good bits. This could also be a good metric for judging if you want to rent something. like, "Wow, this has 1/2 hour of dropped frames! Awesome!"
I bet they won't play this song on the radio
I bet you they won't play this new (bleep) song
It's not that it's (buzz) or (beep beep) controversial
Just that the (dinging words) are awfully strong
You can't say (honk) on the radio
Or (shot) or (twang) or (bleh),
You can't even say I'd like to (creak) you one day
Unless you're a doctor with a very large (boing)
So I bet you they won't play this song on the radio
I bet you they daren't (scratching) well programme it
I bet you their (ch-chinging) old Programme Directors
Will think it's a load of horse (raspberry)
Conservatism: The fear that somewhere, somehow, someone you think is your inferior is being treated as your equal.
http://www.taco-bell.com
One that auto-inserts naughty clips into movies.
You and the Mrs are watching Armageddon and boom! Liv Tyler boobies.
Or better yet, maybe they will make better movies. I don't have any problem with films that have sex, violence, etc, if it makes sense to the story. But there is a whole raft of crap that is stuck in films because the "filmmakers" don't think we as an audience will stay focused on the film without someone on screen using "F***" in all of its grammatical forms every 10 seconds. Its unnecessary and shows a lack of creativity on the writers' part.
When Hollywood actually starts doing something artistic again, then maybe I'll give "artistic integrity" thought again. Since most of the stuff that comes out now is remakes of films done 30 years ago ( and mostly the earlier ones are better...I give you the Marky Mark Planet of the Apes as a prime example of just because you can doesn't mean you should. ), I hardly think that it requires much artistry to remake something that has already been done. A decent painter could reproduce the Mona Lisa with paint by numbers, but that doesn't require much artistry.
I see some French RCA exec laughing all the way to the bank on how they're making money on American prudness . . .
What is "Insightful" about this flamebait from an anonymous troll?
Please identify, for the sake of the home viewer, a single terrorist act committed by fundamentalist Christians in the United States in the last 100 years. If by some miracle you manage to pull that off, please continue doing so until you have identified as many terrorist acts as have been committed by radical Muslims in the last 3 months.
Good luck.
Hint: No, you may *not* point at Eric Rudolph or any idiot murderers of abortionists, since fundamentalist Christians uniformly condemn the acts of these thugs.
Incredibly, the sale of a product such as this will have ... absolutely no impact on the life of anyone who doesn't want to buy it. Leftists are constantly prattling at others with actual moral standards, saying rubbish like "If you don't like it, change the channel." Well, here's a product that no Leftist (or right-winger, for that matter) thinking with his crotch ever has to buy. If you don't like it...don't buy it. I think we can confidently state that this product isn't designed for you anyway.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
Go to the clearplay website and check out their list of censored films.
I was shocked to see the following"About a Boy"
Moderate "Blood and Gore"???
Did I sleep through the "killer-death-zombie" scene or something?
Look, I am all for censorship ... as long as it is done at the individual level! Don't tell me what I can or can not watch, let me decide for myself.
At the same time, let me setup v-chips and filters so that I don't have to see nudity, listen to cursing, see graphic violence if I do not want to.
There are a lot of great movies that are "right on the line" for what we want our kids to see. Many of these films would be great if only this couple of lines were removed and these one or two scenes were cut/editted. I looked into CleanFlix, but what they edit out versus what I want edited out tended to differ.
With all the technology we have at our disposal, I would like to see each scene rated instead of just the whole film, and I would like the ratings to be enhanced. If the movie has 250 scenes where only 1 scene has nudity and only 2 scenes have "naughty words", why should I not be able to cut the nude scene and censor the sound on the naughty words?
I am already ticked off about them showing previews for PG and PG-13 movies at G movies I take the kids to. And that does not even mention the commercials for TV-MA shows during shows that at rated much lower. My kids do not need to see the "sex sells" part of the commercial for an adult show while watching a kids show.
Long story short (too late), give me, the user, have all the information about the film at as granular a level as possible and give me all the control.
It would be a lot simpler if the folks who would buy the players didn't watch crap.
Visiting the video rental store is just plain depressing. For each copy of Momento (or any other movie that at least tries to be creative) there are 23 copies of Gigli (or some other collection of meaningless drivel for the Wal-Mart crowd).
(I demand quality from films. I mean, just because I want to see Adam Sandler screaming while trapped inside a spaceship headed for the Sun, does that make me a snob?)
Oh well. As long as I can choose not to turn ClearPlay on, I'm okay with it. Creative works won't wind up censored anyway as far as I can tell..
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
Over-engineered. I guess it's either that or the bottom line.
I know you are psychotic, but please make an effort.
your right in that it's a win for RCA, and a Win for the consumer, after all, it CAN show boobies; you have the option.
but you only covered the dvd player and the person watching it. The content providers should also have a say in if they want the art that they put together piece by piece ripped apart by some $79 dollar wallmart dvd player.
what if the entire movie lays on the scene where someone happens to be topless? guess you won't be watchin the sapranos.
it's harmfull unless both the users and the content providers have the ability to circumvent it.
life is harsh, people say naughty things, and do naughty acts, the sooner we get over it, the better. look how dogs shake hands.
are you implying that people killing each other "with firearms" is somehow better or worse than any other method of killing each other?
In a way, yes. Correlation does not imply causation by any means, but most feature films where the violence happens without firearms tend to have a better underlying script and therefore more artistic merit in the end analysis than your typical guns-and-explosions summer blockbuster. Look at LOTR, Braveheart, or any other fantasy film set before the invention of firearms.
> Watch TV with your kids. Know what they watch.
No adult can remain sane after watching an hour of teletubbies. Or the wiggles. Or Barney. In fact, such adults might be so insane as to actually buy books.
> It will be sold by Walmart for the price of $79, and what with the recent Janet Jackson 'wardrobe malfunction' this product will likely be lauded by the FCC and moralists everywhere, though Hollywood is already complaining."
Yep, it's Friday. The MPAA-is-on-our-side day.
This gives the consumer the choice... sounds like a good thing to me.
You don't like it, buy another model for yourself.
Agile Artisans
It looked like a joke to me, especially since media is not covered by the DMCA. The medium is. Fast-forwarding, or blotting/muting is not an access control circumvention method.
Other than the fact that you are completely wrong, nice try.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Boobies bad. War good.
There is a company (Co-op) called CleanFilms which will RENT an EDITED version of the movies to you. This company would go down way before RCA - but they are still around.
From their site:
Is it legal to edit movies?
Yes. CleanFilms is a Co-operative rental club. All subscribers to our service become members of the Co-op. The Co-op collectively purchases original, unedited DVD movies then has them edited - always maintaining a 1 to 1 ratio of edited and non-edited originals.
As owners of the original, unedited movies, the Co-op has the right to edit out content that is objectionable to its members - similar to how you might press mute to avoid hearing objectionable language today. Accordingly, you must subscribe as a member of the rental club before you can rent edited movies.
re RCA DVD PLAYER: If you're concerned about DMCA, the original dvd content stays in tact on the dvd player. It's not like player actually modifies the content, it simply jumps around and ff through chapters the viewer would like to miss.
While I agree completely with your sentiment, it's not quite so simple.
In this case we have a company attempting to profit from what is in essence a "pre-edited" version of a feature film. True, ClearPlay is not redistributing content (despite what one is left to infer from michael's typically flamebait post). True, consumers are choosing or not choosing to use the service. But by taking "fast forward" to the pre-programmed extreme, and by attempting to profit on the results, ClearPlay is in a legal gray area. Suppose I invented a player that colorized old black and white films -- would that not be considered a device that creates derivative works? You bet.
Still, I think they are in the clear. You still have to rent the original, unedited film to use their service. And the purpose of the device is neither artistic nor to create new works but to allow consumers to hear/view only the portions they choose to see of a work (where they delegate the details of the choice to a third party of their choosing). So I don't think this will be a problem.
Anyway it is amusing to see the staunchly free-speech crowd, who clearly would never choose such a product themselves, so quick to censor the free choice of consumers who would. There's censoring for you.
Im amazed at how many readers here jumped on this decrying censorship and claiming all sorts of DMCA violations. This "censorship" is almost definitely going to be an OPTION for parents to edit what their kids see.
This is a feature of DVDs that should have been available from the beginning! Why is it that I can't select the "clean" or "edited for tv" version of a movie from the main dvd menu? Sometimes I want to allow my kids to watch a movie, but only the edited version so they don't have to see any gore or gratuitous sex. This should be an option on every DVD player. It looks like it only edits around 500 movies... If they were smart, they would make something like a CDDB for movie edits. That way, a central database can store all the edits, and you can download them as you get new movies. Something like this could probably be done with MythTv.
You should be lauding this as an long overdue advancement of the technology.
If it can be turned off, so what...
I do wonder however, who is deciding what is acceptable and what is not.
And if this changes over time, does this thing update itself somehow to reflect changes in society, or will I still not be able to watch things that have become acceptable in 5 years that aren't now...
Or vice-versa.. will it let me watch illegal presentations when the wind blows and something is deemed illegal down the road.
( i.e. this is a stupid 'feature' )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Is it any wonder that Walmart would be selling something like this? It seems to be on par with the things they do. I mean, I am a very proud owner of a special Walmart copy of Nirvana's In Utero where the fourth song has been renamed to "Waif Me". The lyrics haven't changed so some heathen can still hear what is really sung.
I do suppose however, if I want freedom to hear naughty langauge and explicit scenes, others have the freedom to not see it. Just think, you can finally watch porn without seeing any of that nasty sex stuff.
This is much along the lines of, "Honey, I only read the articles." Now it's "I only watch the porn for the wonderful dialog and breathtaking locations."
It kills the movie in accordance with Jewish law?
Either way, the parent post is not talking about the article. Moderators should be wary of such posters. Of course, that means the Moderators are:
* Responsible enough to RTFM before moderating
* Aren't trolls abusing mod points.
there's nothing of interest in the plot of "Eyes Wide Shut" to a puritanical old biddy. which is why someone would watch an altered move. they want just the plot without any "contreversial" footage. the thing is, these R rated films have a plot that is also R rated. the story line itself is just as offensive to those watching the film w/o the offending scenes.
10 years later, poor Johnny gets confused on prom night because he is greeted with big pink round things instead of black squares that he's grown up on.
/. reader he will never have to worry about prom night.
If Johnny is the average
> Legality aside I don't think it's justifiable to edit a piece of artwork.
It's ironic that those who detest morality being imposed on them want to impose their morality on others.
There's nothing holy about artwork - it's a product of effort like any other work. Unless the licence under which the work was sold places restrictions on the buyer, there's nothing wrong editing or modifying something in my possession.
If a modified work was resold, the modifications that took place must be clearly described so that the buyer does not get a wrong impression of the original content or of it's creator.
I have to applaud RCA for providing this product. It will make everyone happy, if they would shut up and think for a minute..
Do you believe that Tom Hanks will be happy to have the atrocities of war stripped from Saving Private Ryan? Will Steven Spielberg be happy when Schindler's List is pared down so that Nazi's don't look like such bad guys? Would Stanley Kubrick, were he still alive, be glad that they are taking out the brutal, violent parts of Full Metal Jacket?
Some writers and directors consider their work to be art and not something to be trifled with by some right-wing Mormon zealot working for Clearplay in Salt Lake City, Utah. They don't want their movie to jarringly skip over important scenes. They don't want their movies stripped of all emotional impact, adult language, and human sexuality. They don't want the viewer being left confused as to the subtleties of the motivating factors (which were censored out) that drove the characters.
Uh hello, this is a win-win for everybody!
That is, everyone for whom artistic vision is unimportant.
That's just an American thing. In many other countries movies, whether from Hollywood or not, get rated in the opposite way: nudity and mild sex is fine, violence is not good for kids. You should get out more often...
By producing - without permission - altered versions of intellectual property, censors are effectively pirating directors' and studios' work, the lawsuit argues.
I see the point; I'm sure studios would feel differently about this technology if they were asked permission and negotiated in good faith with ClearPlay. I'm surprised Clearplay believes it has the rights to rebroadcast and resegment these movies, which are copyrighted work.
No trolls about copyright hypocrisy, please.
Why do you post when you have no idea what you're talking about?
Firstly, this is RCA we're talking about. Like all legal DVD manufacturers, they are licensing CSS from the DVDCCA. Therefore, no DMCA since they aren't circumventing anything, just using a technology in a way that they are licensed to do. Secondly, copyright law doesn't apply since they aren't distributing anything. They are creating a device for people to exercise their fair use rights. I have every right to edit and make derivative works of a DVD that I own provided that I a) do not distribute that derivative work and b) do no circumvent any copyright protection scheme. This device allows consumers to meet those two provisions.
It will be sold by Walmart for the price of $79, and what with the recent Janet Jackson 'wardrobe malfunction' this product will likely be lauded by the FCC and moralists everywhere
Anyone here know what's the name for this "what with" construct? Is it from another language (if it appears in German, maybe)? What is its correct usage?
I don't hear a big cry about networks like USA and FX editing movies. What's the difference?
I'm not drunk, I just have a speech impediment. And a stomach virus. And an inner ear infection.
'nuff said.
Ryosen
One man's "Troll, +1" is another man's "Insightful, +1".
If your 9 year old is watching movie that NEED to be censored, well I kind of question your parental aptitudes...
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
"The Princess Bride" is a fantastic, sweet, and funny "family" movie, with a lot to entertain adults as well as children.
There's a very cute scene in the movie where Peter Faulk's narration of the story is interrupted by the kid (who he's reading to) expressing distress about the direction of the plot. When he hears Faulk explain that the bad guy doesn't die in the end, he wonders just what sort of book it is and shouts, "Jesus, Grandpa!" Faulk's character calmly deals with the child's vulgar outburst as most doting grandfathers would, and the movie goes on.
While that scene is very amusing, some very religious parents would really rather not screen a movie in which a child takes The Lord's name in vain, especially not for comedic effect. It doesn't bother me; it might not bother you, but a lot of families would rather skip over that moment. Would removing that brief scene make the whole movie suddenly not worth watching? No.
So I could see why a service like this might be popular.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
You wouldn't even get that. Remember, all the milk bar furniture was made of anatomically correct nude manikins. Off the top of my head, it seems like viewers would be stuck with a few shots of Alex's parents talking-though Mum's blue hair might be too frightening.
I'm sure many parents will love this though. Now they can just sit their kids in front of the tube and not worry their little heads over whether their kids are seeing inappropriate material.
You know, I thought this whole device was a great idea until I read this. IMHO, I think one of America's biggest problems right now is horrible parenting.
Too many parents kill for opportunities to simply sit their kids down and forget about them for convience. This tool is only going to continue making that problem worse!
Why make sure that the kids are watching clean material when we can rely on the good ol' folks at Clear Play to do it for us?! In all actuality, parents should instead be sitting down with the kids to watch a program, or even play a game for heaven's sake!
Don't ignore the kids, they need the parents' attention!
01000001 01011001 01000010 01000001 01000010 01010100 01010101
If it could skip over stupid plot setup and crappy dialogue. I won't have to use the remote with my left anymore
There are a lot of posts here about censoring current movies. Well, movies get cut and censored all the time to meet rating. This could be a good tool to allow directors to produce movies as they intend and allow users to choose the rating they're willing to watch it as. Of course that would cut down on the supplemental sales of "director's cut" editions...
So content developers and censorship-sensitive folks are predictably up in arms about the whole thing, but I have to say, I think this is a good idea.
I have young kids (2 and 4), and sadly, there are plenty of movies I think they'd like, but they just won't get played because of a couple of words here and there. If they were older, I could explain to them what they were, and why we don't use them, but as they're soaking up language like sponges at the moment, it's just not prudent.
For example, we saw a movie last weekend, and it was 99.99% ok, but it had the words bitch, damn, and ass in it. What I found particularly annoying was that this was a movie somewhat geared toward kids (Casper), and so I can't imagine why they chose to put those words in it, it's not like the dialogue was critical to the chiaroscuro of the characters. Luckily, they missed the words, but it's not something I'd keep in the collection. Luckily, that's a crap movie, so no one will miss it, but there are loads of other movies (like the Blues Brothers, for example) that I think they'd like (James Brown and car crashes, who wouldn't), but there are just a couple seconds I'd like to clip out here and there. Not forever mind you, but until they're old enough to know why they shouldn't use those words.
There's a void of decent content out there that's suitable for kids. I don't want to be stuck with Disney crap or any other warmed over Barney garbage. We want the right to buy our music and have fair use over it, why not our movies? If you buy a video game, you often have the option of 'turning down' the gore, why should this be any different?
I'm sure in the long run, I'd be disappointed with the level of 'editorializing' that the machine does, but like I said, soon enough they'll be old enough to hear/see some of it and besides, I'm sure they'll know how to deactivate it by the time they're 8 or so.
Man, I hope youre kidding. Sexuality is natural and repressing it only helps push us into closer to complete cultural insanity.
Filmmakers can't even make a realistic sex scene without getting the NC-17 kiss off death from the moralists.
Kids grow up with no positive images of sex, just religious hatred. Not to mention the federal government is pushing unrealistic abstinence and downplaying the importance of condoms and birth-control.
Who is the fucked up culture here?
Please. get ... off ... the ...soap box.
people who are that much into religon will not be sending their kids to the public schools. they'll not be watching movies of the "world" make by the "world". they won't have a tv in the house to let that worldly influence into their lives.
i think the families that want to skip over that moment should take a harder look at their lives and what they're influencing themselves with. if you're going to watch "worldly" movies with your kids you need them to understand that they're created from a different perspective perhaps than you might have. otherwise, yes, stay away from movies.
My entire generation loaned eachother uncensored VHS tapes because of our childish curiosity, and my god didn't we all turn out badly? We're all going round raping girls because of that smut we watched as 10 year olds and swearing like sailors in restaurants, quick somone sue Francis Ford Coppola!
I noted this characteristic when VCRs first appearing in great numbers in homes in the mid 1980's. Here was the first generation of kids where were allowed to see 'adult theme' movies; what would the effects be?
Glad to see it hasn't affected your (generation's) sense of irony! (A single sentence definition of irony - It's where the Iranians come from)
Actually I think the effect has been to cause a subliminal expectation that adult problems and situations will have Hollywood endings. Quick and nearly complete resolutions of complex issues.
I don't know. But there's at least a Master's degree thesis in the topic in case you can't find a job because the 'Baby Boomers' fucked up the economy so badly.
I note that the company that makes the decisions about what constitutes "adult content" is based in Utah. Does this mean that scenes of wanton coffee drinking will be removed? It reminds me of a comment I heard about American television once - "any scenes relating to sex usually draw complaints from an audience the size of Salt Lake City. In fact is usually *is* the population of Salt Lake City". Can't we make Utah an independent country and stop them skewing the demographic for the rest of us?
I'm not at all convinced the technology would work very well as they've designed it... but I'd actually buy one of these to see how it works if I had some spare $$$. Should be some interesting signal processing going on.
Do I smell an open-source alternative brewing? The signal analysis code alone would be worth its weight in censored naughty-bit pics...
Any generalization is a stupid one.
It's not different because you can turn this feature on or off depending on whether or not you want to watch those scenes. Personally, I think it's a good alternative and having a choice is good. The Matrix Reloaded is a good example of a movie where the gratuitous sex scene completely detracted from the flow and purpose of the movie. That scene could easily be deleted with no value lost.
Personally, I'm interested in taking this technology to the next level. I'd like to see an XML schema that would instruct a DVD player to cut the movie in a certain way, including adding or substituting external video sources, voice or complete sound tracks (Dark Side of the Rainbow? How about roll-your-own MST3K?) or adding subtitles (for languages that won't generate enough profit for the studio to warrant, for a film school professor to comment on techniques being used in the scene, history classes to give some background on an expression used in a period piece....) This should be a perfectly legal way for a director to do a 'remix' of a movie by distributing the XML file to people who would then have to buy the DVD to view the 'derivative work', so everybody gets paid. The buyer would still have the original, and be able to play it any time the way the original director intended, but might also be able to enjoy seeing some new perspectives on the work.
This is exactly the same as the software licenses that require derivative works to be released as patches only.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
There is a video rental service here called Family Flix (Flicks, Fliks, however they spelled it) that provides movies that are cleaned up already for rent.
Last time I looked it was only VHS, but I'm sure they could do it for DVDs as well. They had an extensive list of movies available (1000's) which seems more comprehensive than 500.
If you are inclined to watch censored movies, a better alternative already exists.
You can lose something that is loose, so tighten the loose item so you don't lose it.
Dangit, where are my extra mod points???
I'm not sure the reactive mode solution (this DVD player) is so much the solution as it is a band-aid, but I really am still annoyed that the full promise of the DVD format hasn't been magnified or even realized. Multiple MPAA ratings on a single disc really isn't that difficult, nor is it cost-prohibitive. Heck, even just do a non-R version on one side altogether. They do those cuts early on for TV and other venues anyway!
I don't care much what other people want to watch or what other parents want to let their children watch, but I have a reasonable standard in my house that doesn't get crossed. I'm perfectly fine not watching movies that cross that standard (long list, so I won't elaborate), but it would be nice to be able to still watch them without the offensive language and unnecessary violence.
Call me prudish (I'm not -- 4-letter words, b00bies and guns are not pure evil, but they can really be overdone very easily), but I think this is a viable alternative to movie studios not providing more on-DVD format choices...
Finally - I can watch porn for the story!
Geez, for crying out loud, that post was ignorant and off topic, not insightfull. What's wrong with the mods today?
Just because he mentioned Mozilla doesn't make him insightfull, no matter how much Firefox rocks (which is a lot).
Censorship is a word used in reference to a Government office
NO ITS NOT!
(Well, it is, but not exclusively)
Read the other replies (yes, I'm in there too), plenty of people have corrected that ignoramus (that's not a swear word, btw), and the AC still got modded up afterwards.
Censorship is not limited to governments. Private censorship is not only possible but a reality.
Censorship happens to all layers of society. Individuals censor themselves, parent censor ther kids (don't say that Timmy!), schools (private and public) censor students and teachers, corporations censor themselves and their employees, governments censort heir citizens, but are not the only ones to do so!
You can't take the sky from me...
Insightful? Boy, you mods are dumber than I thought. Do any of you actually KNOW the fundamental tenets of Christianity? God has given us free will because mindless automatons cannot truly experience love, but why do you left-wing extremists insist on abusing your free will in every imaginable fashion? Do you think that women are mere objects that exist solely for your consumption? If so, then you are no better than the radical fundamentalist Muslims that you are verbally attacking.
Have these people ever watched an R-rated movie on TV. They come up with bullshit lines just to appease people who whine about stupid things (like the wardrobe malfunction: grow up, America). That is censorship, and nobody complains. But yeah, it still sucks. Kind of like the "D-chip" or whatever we heard so much about a few years back...
Dead cats can be quite useful.
Never trust an atom. They make up everything.
I expect this to fly off the shelves into every god-fearing Xtian home in the U.S. until...
Mel releases 'The Passion' on DVD and this player will only show the opening and closing credits.
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
I would like to take a look at the code for the "Boobie Recognition Subsystem".
Is there a dipswitch inside that will allow me to only watch the "naughty bits" without having to sit through the rest of the movie?
It was not a hypothetical example, I actually once heard a Lutheran minister express mild disappointment that, in an otherwise rather innocent and light-hearted movie, such language was used. If he had the option to watch "The Princess Bride" with his family with that single explative (the only one in the movie) edited out, he would have taken it.
Such a world-view might seem strange and alien folk who think it's funny to glue a "Darwin fish" to their car, but guess which group is the mainstream of American culture. That's right, it's the people buying "clean" versions of hip-hop albums at Wal-Mart.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
My problem is:
1. who decides what to censor? are "terrorist movies" censored in those days? what kind of speech is "good", and who decides it?
2. if a movie has nudity or cursing, it's a choice of the director. it has a meaning, no matter if you like it or not. Censoring would be like going around with glasses that make you go blind every time you see a begger on the street. I know you don't want to see it, but it's there and ignoring won't solve the problem (which, in this case, would be that nudity and violence are part of society and not only of TV).
questions?
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
Why do you think Hollywood hates the idea of these things? They consider themselves artists and artists don't like it when other people start changing their work.
That is true for artists in small personal media like books, painting, photography, and songwriting, but not Hollywood filmmaking.
Films are giant 60 million dollar individual corporations involving hundreds of people. The entire product is designed primarily a revenue- generating enterprise using long-established visual cliches and well-known plots and dialog with little surprise that could adversely affect the income stream.
Films bring in most of their revenue in the first three weeks after release to the theatres.
Hollywood would welcome any method to tinker with the product after the initial release if it could generate more revenue in the ancillary (VCR-DVD-airline-TV) markets. Presently it's just too difficult to recall the cast and set designers to do 'touch-up' refilming of the product after its release.
But with digitally-generated virtual actors in the future, that may not be the case and films will most likely be altered in a major way in order to gain more revenue after the theatrical run.
I don't understand why this is so horrible to so many people. When you watch movies on TV, they are cut for violence or sex or language, yet the MPAA doesn't want you to be able to do the same thing with movies that you own. I personally don't understand why they don't market DVD's currently with edited versions. It could be an option, just like foreign language version are on most discs.
I can tape the edited version of movies off of television legally, but according to the MPAA, I'm not allowed to buy the full version of a movie and edit it at home, to play at home. I think there is a bigger market than they realize for edited films.
The Censoring would actually work quite well in the Reloaded DVD. Who in their right mind would like watching a naked keanu ass anyway!
I read about them in Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy. I never thought it would be real. This is obviously the first step. Once the technology is miniatrized we can have sun glasses that get dark when ever anything offensive is in your field of vision.
Peril resistent glasses can't be that far behind.
I'm sure you're going to get a lot of flak from the ACs on that one, but I have to agree. Seems that whenever someone makes this argument, you get people falling back to the idea that both are "natural". Well, duh - of course they are. That's hardly the point.
The point is, only one (sex) is life-affirming and good. Violence, OTOH, is too often the inappropriate problem-solving response of the limited mind. I believe that repeatedly viewing violence, and most especially seeing it presented as an appropriate solution, makes people more likely to think that it IS an appropriate solution when it might not be.
That being said, I didn't let my kids watch TV, period. Don't watch it myself, either - IMNSHO it's brainrotting crap. YMMV of course. And I know we're talking about film/DVD here, but the parent was talking about TV. Cheers!
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
"Kosher" means "legal for human consumption", like god's version of USDA inspected beef. This DVD player, snipping out legal but "naughty" bits, isn't kosher. Just watch Woody Allen's _Manhattan_ or _Annie Hall_ on it to see the difference.
--
make install -not war
It's not different because you can turn this feature on or off depending on whether or not you want to watch those scenes. Personally, I think it's a good alternative and having a choice is good.
Its too binary for my tastes. What if I don't want the gore and the cursing, but I don't mind the lovemaking and the discussion of the origins of species?
Its the fact that some private group of "thinkers of the children" are making arbitrary choices about what others should or should not see that bothers me.
Aside from that I think the technology itself is a good idea, but you should have a choice of flavours.
The Matrix Reloaded is a good example of a movie where the gratuitous sex scene completely detracted from the flow and purpose of the movie.
Its not gratuitous, it had a purpose, but it was soooooooo looooooong that by the time its over you've forgotten the point and are only left looking at bad softcore porn and wondering when it'll end allready.
(The point was to show the animality and warm sensuality of the "free born" people of zion in contrast to the cold and sterile lovemaking of Neo and Trinity...and then it wouldn't end...gah)
P.S. "L'essential est invisible pour les yeux." That should be "essentiel", with an "e", no "a"...
You can't take the sky from me...
Our censoring overlords think there's sex and nudity in Apollo 13! I must have missed that....
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
Dude!!! If I go to a store and buy a painting, and take it home, it is MY painting! I can do what I want with it! If I decide that I would prefer it to have the upper-left corner ripped off and the lower-left corner painted over with a vomit-yellow...... that is MY decision. I have a right to change the painting how I see fit.
If I then meet a friend who really like the painting I bought, and likes it done the way that I have done it, then he can buy another painting just like mine, bring it over, and let me do it up the same way!!!!!! That is HIS decision!!!
And I certainly don't think that the painter of the original work would get all upset and sue us because we payed him the full amount for his painting and then changed it to our liking! I think he would be glad to sell us a few more copies at full price and let us do whatever we want to it!
The deal is, is that Hollywood is made up of a bunch of creeps who have nothing better to do than to fill your minds with a bunch of polluted and trashy filth.
And no, I'm not your momma! I am an 18-year-old male, so that can just go to dispell the idea that every teenage male wants to watch filth!!!
I highly commend RCA for their efforts... and what's more, I hope that they eventually make a filter that works on ALL DVDs.
You mean a dead BADGER.
oh wow come on guys. This is clearly not going to work. a) we're going to find some people who complain it left some bad words in or soem who say it blocked out words unecessarily. b) what does hollywood complain for.. it's not blocking their DVDs. their product is whole and intact. technically their 'vision' remains. i mean come on if someone wants to watch Trading Places without the gratuitous stripper/dance/house party scene then what does holywood care. They still paid for it.
Well gee... Fundamentalism refers to beliefs, so I guess that would be someone who believes in some kind of fundamentals that include pacifism.
The reason you're getting confused by this is that fundamentalist Islam is tremendously violent. The Koran is chock full of wonderful things like instructions to convert people by force and kill non muslisms. While it also true that there are peaceful instructions in the Koran, what many people don't realize is that early surahs (verses) are over-ruled by later ones. (All Surah's are supposedly arranged in the order that Mohammed wrote them down). Fundamentalist mustlims take the violent instructions at face value with fairly dramatic results.
Fundamentalist Christians (normally Protestants) are the other big group to whom "Fundamentalism" is often ascribed. These people also take the bible quite literally. This normally expresses itself publicly with strong beliefs that abortion kills a human life, homosexual activity is always immoral and that heterosexual intimacy should be confined to marriage and the drive to tell others about their beliefs. People frequently dislike Christian fundamentalists, because they don't like being told that they are sinful and need to change.
That's understandable, but there's a big difference between fundamentalist Islam and fundamentalist Christianity. Islam is politically theocratic by nature while Christianity gets along quite well with secularism. Part of the reason for this is that fundamentalist Christians believe that faith is between individuals and God, and many see this as instructions to keep faith and government separate.
Now because I want this post to be on-topic, I must say that I find objections to this technology quite contraditory. Most objectors insist they believe in free choice and free choice. Yet somehow it's an offense to a director if someone decides not to watch some parts of a film. Dare I suggest that objectors aren't really interested in choice, they just want to tell others to act as they do? Free choice people. That's what it's all about. The freedom to choose. This isn't censorship because there is no outside agency imposing it. I thought the messianic message of slashdot was that technology should enable free choice...
Come on Slashdot, let's mod these bitches!!
harmonious design
Pragmatically speaking, increasing violence while decreasing sex would help to solve the potential problems of global overpopulation!
[[This takes place at the supermarket]]
MAN: hehey! Its Lois Griffin!I love your act, nice melons.
PETER (husband): You listen here pal...
LOIS (wife): Peter! Im holding melons.
PETER: oh...
MAN: and she aint got bad hooters either.
Peter: Now hold on a minute!
Lois: Peter! Im holding hooters (owls)...
Peter: (grunt)
{pause}
Man: (very fast) your wifes hot.
PETER: alright thats it!!!
{mind over murder}
When they outlaw b00bies then only the outlaws with have b00bies.
=-)
What kind of fucked up system is that?
One founded by the descendents of sexually repressed religious zealots who wanted to be able to torture confessions out of witches and heretics in peace?
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
It's funny it's taken so long for someone to produce a DVD player that does this. I mean, that was one of the big things DVD players were supposed to do, back when they were first proposed. Auto-sensor R rated films into PG. Choose the rating level you are comfortable with. And now, it's finally available, after how many years?
Maybe this will allow families to watch more adult programming than the usual Disney fare. It would be nice to watch something with some depth, without worring about what new words will my child demonstrate at school tomorrow.
Well gee... Fundamentalism refers to beliefs, so I guess that would be someone who believes in some kind of fundamentals that include pacifism.
The reason you're getting confused by this is that fundamentalist Islam is tremendously violent. The Koran is chock full of wonderful things like instructions to convert people by force and kill non muslisms. While it also true that there are peaceful instructions in the Koran, what many people don't realize is that early surahs (verses) are over-ruled by later ones. (All Surah's are supposedly arranged in the order that Mohammed wrote them down). Fundamentalist mustlims take the violent instructions at face value with fairly dramatic results. Fundamentalist Christians (normally Protestants) are the other big group to whom "Fundamentalism" is often ascribed. These people also take the bible quite literally. This normally expresses itself publicly with strong beliefs that abortion kills a human life, homosexual activity is always immoral and that heterosexual intimacy should be confined to marriage and the drive to tell others about their beliefs. People frequently dislike Christian fundamentalists, because they don't like being told that they are sinful and need to change. That's understandable, but there's a big difference between fundamentalist Islam and fundamentalist Christianity. Islam is politically theocratic by nature while Christianity gets along quite well with secularism. Part of the reason for this is that fundamentalist Christians believe that faith is between individuals and God, and many see this as instructions to keep faith and government separate. Now because I want this post to be on-topic, I must say that I find objections to this technology quite contraditory. Most objectors insist they believe in free choice and free choice. Yet somehow it's an offense to a director if someone decides not to watch some parts of a film. Dare I suggest that objectors aren't really interested in choice, they just want to tell others to act as they do? Free choice people. That's what it's all about. The freedom to choose. This isn't censorship because there is no outside agency imposing it. I thought the messianic message of slashdot was that technology should enable free choice...
In that 2 minute delay I had another thought... How is this DVD player any different that Taco providing me with the ability to not see -1 posts or setting my threshold to whatever I want?
. --- If you're looking for free e-mail you won't find it here! http://www.noemailhere.com
Ok, the censorship part of this has been covered. I'm interested in how the system determines what to censor. It sounds like it knows what to skip based on the movie. "Subscribers can then watch standard copies of the 500-or-so films on its list, with the assurance that they will automatically skip over mute anything that children or the squeamish may not like. " But can I pick and choice to see the sex scenes but not the drug sense or I think that *&%! is ok but not %$#&*!. How upset is a parent going to be when they buy a new movie not on the list and pop it in to babysit their kids and find out it isn't censored?
It is so simple. We're not talking distribution, not talking about making it publically available. Wheter you draw with a maker on your tv og have it digitally blacked out in the privacy of you own home, is nobodys buisness but yours.
We could just invert the logic so it doesn't show anything except the naughty bits.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
You might be right, it may not be a derivative work, it may be instructions for creating a derivative work. So it's contributory infringement.
Might also not be DMCA actionable, but I am not sure about that. Might be up to the details of th CSS license.
The pathological case here would be if there was a machine that would take a recipe and produce a re-mix of a movie, changing scene orders, dimming brightness, maybe even split screening. Would that recipe be a derivative work? Either way, if you distribute the recipe to someone without the right to make derivative works (everyone) you may be contributing to infringement.
Where do you get *your* entropy?
With closed captioning, watching dialogue is doable. This chunk of closed captioning says "I say we fuck his shit up", you just mute it and RegEx the CC, saying "I say we mess his stuff up" or the like. OK, it's inelegant and dependent on something this isn't necessarily there, but it's a robust hack in most situations.
But identifying this curve as a breast? That'd be hard. I know a prof whose work is this (and thus has a huge university-sponsored porn archive) and I didn't think he was anywhere near prime time on it.
The United States, Mexico, UK, among other countries requires that a work, in order to be protected by Copyright MUST be fixated. A Derivative work is still a "work", so it also must be fixated. So, is there any fixation of the "derivative work" in the RCA player? Could it be fixated on the DVD player's cache? Completely different is the case in Continental Law countries (most of Europe, Japan, Latin America...). Fixation there is NOT a requisite for protection, so in those countries these kinds of devices should be illegal. A third point is Moral Rights, also common in Continental Law Countries, but not so in USA or the UK. Moral rights are a consequence of thinking that there is a powerful link between the author and his works, and that all the works contain the authors personality. That is why, in the moral rights doctrine, you cannot alter the integrity of any work that could be prejudicial to the authors honor or reputation. On the other hand, copyright law in the states, for historical and cultural reasons, mostly cares just of the economic value of the works, and treats them as commodities. To clarify this differences, just think why the law that protects intellectual works is called COPYRIGHT in common law countries (the right to make copies that have and economic value) and Authors Right in Continental Law Countries... Please excuse my english.
Debbie Does Dallas The Next Generation actually has quite a bit of plot to it. It's a touching story of a mother who's trying to get her daughter to follow in her foot steps and be a chearleader, and how Debbie falls in love with the football star Dallas, with a few evil lesbians who conflict this goal
I edited out all the nudity and sex once including all the scenes of dialog where the lead characters were sitting in skirts without any panties, which I found annoying as it was actually required for the plot. It was roughly a 13min flick after the edit.
Caligula on the other hand who's first scene is a ladies bum, a film that could be argued as actually having production value I suspect would have less in the way of non naughty content.
Hey, all you parent's out there I've got a great tool for being a good parent; it's called your voice, head, hand and heart. Talk to your children stop looking for technology to remove the burden of actually being a parent.
As well look at your current DVD player you can set it up to disallow movies that are not for younger eyes already, set it to only play G, G-PG, or G-PG13 . As well if you are worried about Television, every TV since the early 90's has had the "V-chip" all you have to do is read up on these technologies and use them as well.
However, my parent's never used any of these devices, I am a 19 year old sophomore at Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, NY) and by all accounts of "adults" I am a very good person. So as I said technology is not the answer to raising kids, talking and being there for kids is the answer. Just be a parent there is no need to waste you money on superfluous gadgets.
Innuendo was extremely common in older music and it was common for it to try to push the limits. Take this Chuck Berry song:. php?tid =MjM1MjU=
http://www.france-jeunes.net/paroles/index
You *know* what it's about yet there isn't one "naughty" word in it. Heck it doesn't use a single word that the Pope himself wouldn't use. 5 year old in convents use those words all the time....just not arranged that way otherwise they'd get a ruler to the knuckles.
I guess our society is just going back to the future where subversion was the norm.
Great, now Spaceballs won't make any sense... Dark Helmet: How many ******* do we have on this ship anyhow?. Entire Crew: YO! Dark Helmet: I knew it! I'm surrounded by *******! (Pulls down facemask) Keep firing *******!
I assume you're in Taiwan, or at least a country that doesn't enforce copyright laws. I doubt you're in the US, or another country that seriously enforces copyright laws, since what you're describing as your rights is nothing like the rights you get under copyright. (Disclaimer: Not a Lawyer)
>> I do have the right to purchase a physical book from you and black out the "bad" passages,
Sure. You bought the media, so you should be able to muck around with it to your heart's content.
>> and I do have the right to resell it for cash. Not a copy of it, mind you--you still have the copyright.
No you don't, unless you're makeing a parody. You're creating a derivative work in this case, and trying to sell your new artistic creation IS illegal, unless you were explicitly given the rights to do so or the work is in the public domain.
>> I do have the right to my opinion that minutes 12.1 to 13.6 and 34.9 to 40.0 contain violence unsuitable for children under 18, and I do have the right to physically cut those minutes out of the tape I purchased from you
Again, sure. Everyone's entitled to their opinions, and you can do whatever the hell you want to the media. You bought it, after all. No argument here.
>> and resell it for cash.
And once again, no. You've clearly created a work that's derived from another work protected under copyright, and distributing it. That makes you vulnerable to legal action under copyright law.
The reason people argue the player is okay is that the player doesn't modify the work itself. It's merely automating the execution of a user's choice on how to use that work. To return to your prior book example, if I sell a service to turn your pages of the most recent NYT #1 bestseller for you, and to skip pages 37 and 93 because you find the descriptions on those pages distasteful, that's okay. But Amazon cannot sell the book with those pages removed without prior consent by the rights holder, because they've changed the work itself.
>people who are that much into religon will not be sending their kids to the public schools.
You do realize that 90 some percent of American's are some type of religious don't you? I still get yelled at(30 yrs old) if I use Jesus' name in vain or say GD. I even get yelled at by my Buddhist wife when I say those things because she believes in respecting other people's religions. Religion is NOT something that just a few radical right wingers believe in. It is a HUGE MAJORITY of people. Are you really that isolated that you don't know about the country you live in?
All the article seems to talk about is the controversy. Same with the discussion I see here. I'm more interested in how RCA plans to implement this. Bleeping out swears, ok, I can see how that might work, but how the hell are they going to recognize and skip nudity? Maybe I'm not thinking creatively enough today, but I can't imagine how they're going to do what they advertise...
... I am still puzzled as to what is so objectionable about the human breast. Find me someone who has never seen one. People who get angry at the sight have a problem they really should not be sharing with the rest of us. Here in Italy the TV is practically nothing but breasts and buttocks. I don't mind that in the least - what I object to is the banality and dullness of it all, but I don't supose the FCC has any standards covering stupidity, lies, hypocrisy or imaginative poverty.
Science fiction for grown-ups...
you submitted:
"3) Consumers get to enjoy more movies."
but if the machine is working:
you cannot enjoy more because the machine won't let you. its just not going to happen.
such films one could never enjoy:
forever amber
valley of the dolls
the von ryan express
up in smoke
animal house
unforgiven
and MOST definitly the matrix 1,2, and espically #3!
"foot notes in history books to tyrants!" -- unknown
Artists have the right to distribute and sell their work as they see fit.
I have the right to watch (use) the work as I see fit. If I only want to watch the bar fight scene in "Out for Justice" instead of sitting through the rest of the movie, I can. That's what "fair use" means - as long as I don't distribute my bowdlerized version, it removes no rights from the authors of a work. I know that I'm viewing a modified version - that's why I chose to watch it on that DVD player in the first place. As long as WalMart specifies the capabilities the DVD to its users, and others don't distribute the modified content, the author's rights haven't been infringed.
People may not see the work as the author would have wanted them to, but that has been true of movies since the capacity to control one's own viewing of those works (on VCRs and DVDs) has been possible. If the author wants a work to be seen only in a specific way, he needs to specifiy that it not be sold in DVD or VCR format so that only those who see the whole movie can have access to it, or control the ability to fast forward or rewind through a work. Of course, in that case, few people would actually buy the work, or modified versions would quickly be pirated and sold to fill the void. Since I don't see this happening, I will assume that either they aren't in control (likely) or don't care. If you play in the real world, you play by real world rules - and in this case the people who pay for and buy the movies want to control their viewing of movies and how they see them. The artists don't have control over how we see movies, and unless they don't release to copyable formats, they never will.
(side note) I didn't hear (or maybe wasn't listening) when artists complained about the regular showing of heavily modified movies on broadcast and cable channels. Why is this any less permissible or less consistent with the artists' intent in a work than the use of DVD with user-controlled censoring?
Morals aside, Wal-Mart already sells a Sanyo brand DVD player that will filter out bad language (audio). It retails for about $60, apparently. It is interesting to see the evolution of this technology. I wonder how it works?
Does this remind you of A[CENSORED]a these days?
Oh, it's just part of the NeoCon s[CENSORED]l training.
Remember Big Brother l[CENSORED]s you!
Your use of a physical copy of a copyrighted work is covered under the first sale doctrine. You can use your own copy however you wish. The RCA DVD player does for you what an ordinary VCR or other DVD players already allows you to do - fast forward through the bits you don't like. You can do the same thing with a book by flipping through the naughty, boring or any other parts you dislike. Fast fowarding, skipping parts creates no derivative works. You are simply using your own copy how you want and that's still protected by fair use and the first sale doctrine.
The right not to have your copyrighted work altered without your permission is called moral rights and is primarily an aspect of European copyrights. US copyright law offers limited moral rights. The two aspects of copyright law that you and the parent post claim to make the DVD player illegal, prohibition against derivative works and moral rights, are both part of traditional copyright law. The DMCA is a horrible, over-reaching law but it doesn't reach where you're pointing or where the parent post thinks the DMCA should reach.
If you were to circumvent built in copy protections or moral rights protection (eg some sort of software that make you play the whole movie) in order to make a copy without the parts you don't want, that would fall under the DMCA. So if you made a 'back-up' copy by removing macrovision and the encryption, that would be illegal under the DMCA. And that is reaching too far IMO.
I'm suprised at the support that European style moral rights have received here since it only adds more restrictions to the fair use of copyrighted works. (The French, as usual, have particularly annoying and far reaching moral rights laws. A artist could destroy a paint that you've bought if he doesn't like how you've displayed it.) The only reason artists and producers are upset about these derivative works is that they're not getting a cut of the profits. I've talked to some producers who've heard of about that video store that rents movies edited for content. While they're concerned about how their works are portrayed, they're more concerned about not getting money out of the deal. They want to be the ones that produce any censored versions so as to reap the rewards of maintaining their artistic integrity.
(this isn't a disagreement with you, just the source you cited)
I didn't hear (or wasn't listening?) when these same people complained about the variety of movies shown on cable and network TV with similar, TV studio-set mdifications to the depiction (picture size and pausing) and content of movies. Where was the concept of "artistic integrity" then? Oh, they were getting paid for it, so showing (and distributing a modified form of their work) is legal, while watching (and not distributing) a modified version of their work under my control should be illegal. Integrity, my a$$.
Is this just another example of the content providers deciding what "fair use" should be (although fair use has never been theirs to determine)?
I can't really disagree with the fundamental ideas in you post, and that's scary, speaking as an U.S'ian.
Violence is just as natural as sex. It is a human constant. I think that is true because toddlers will always fight over a toy until their parents train them no to, and there's always a war going on somewhere.
Some twisted freaks argue that sex and violence are just different facets of the same psychological drive. That's more than a little fucked up, but maybe it is partly true.
The point is, that which is natural is not necessarily good. Equating the two is an anti-hippie peeve of mine, sorry. Humans are sexual beings and denying it makes no sense. Kids will learn about their sexuality, and it's up to their parents to help them see sex as positive and to be responsible about it.
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
WalMart is also the outlet (or one of them with the soon-to-be-defunct K-Mart) that pressures/forces artists to sell modified versions of their albums at their stores (if they wish to sell them there at all). So while selling VC and modified DVD players doesn't imply hypocrisy (they could just be committed to giving everyone what they want to buy, after all), selling bastardized albums while selling VC does imply a certain level of hypocrisy (unless they also sell the non-bastardized albums, which I didn't think they did).
Funny thing is, I read the responses in this thread, everyone bringing up movies that would be rendered pointless or greviously changed by this DVD player. Now I'm planning on picking up Pulp Fiction and Full Metal Jacket on my way home after work. Sometimes seeing (foolish, imho) self-censorship makes you appreciate the freedoms you have all the more. Thanks RCA!
Has anyone figured out the ClearPlay "filter lists" yet? The Internet player for PCs downloads them via the Internet. What does the standalone player do? Can you create your own filter lists? For example, could you express the "Star Wars Phantom Edit" (the one that deletes that Jar Jar characte) as a ClearPlay filter list? This has potential.
I bet someone will come up with a hack that lets you see only contents that's being censored...
The blurb tries to make it sound like they invented something magical, but they didn't. Basically, a company called ClearPlay has humans that watch popular movies, and makes a note of all the "bad" audio/video spots in the movie. They make a big censoring list, and the player IDs the movie against that list and skips the parts the ClearPlay guys said to skip. The database of movie titles is at about 500 so far, which is far, far short of the number of DVDs at your typical rental store. The mentioned Janet Jackson incident, which was live TV, and has nothing at all to do with cencsoring your DVDs.
11*43+456^2
so, what would happen to porn DVDs when you turn the censor on?
As a former mental patient, I find the use of the term "frontal lobotomy" offensive!
It should be replaced with (fuzzy butt-monkeys), ooops, (fuzzy (full moon)-monkeys).
Granted, "Clockwork Orange" would be a very short movie if you took the sex and violence out, but if somebody really just wants to watch Malcome MacDowell extoll the joys of drinking "milk plus" for 10 minutes, that should be up to them.
"Milk Plus" is a drug reference, it's gone too...
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
It is flamebait because it sneaks in a emotional plea which doesn't apply. It also provides no reason why that emotional plea applies in this case, which it doesn't.
Personally, I though the origional comment was a joke. But it is certainly working as flamebait.
Perhaps this can grow to become an example of how individual citizens can reclaim the authority to censor from the government.
When this technology is cheap and easy, and present in every television, then each individual will have the ability to censor as needed. We will not need to have government agencies tell us what we do and don't want to watch.
Broadcasters, on the Internet, the airwaves, and everywhere else will be able to broadcast whatever they want, and your individually tailored TV censor will help you filter out the bits you are not interested in.
With citizens empowered to enforce their censorship preferences like that, what reason would the government of a democracy have for retaining its powers of censorship?
. . . Well, aside from the government's interestes in state-sponsored propeganda and social control, why would the government resist relinquishing its power to censor?
So, if I cue up just the car chase in "Streets of San Fancisco," or maybe just the rescue of Morpheus in "The Matrix" without actually watching the movies in their entirety, am I violating the rights of the artistic creators?
The movie producers don't mind this a bit, most movies include a chapter skip fuction for this purpose. They do mind when you start selling a device that makes other people think that's all there is to the movie.
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
My parents don't watch R-rated movies. Why? Because they feel that supporting movies with content they disapprove of is hypocracy. They make a concious choice not to support them financially. They vote with their wallet.
They also have purchased something called a "Guardian." It reads the closed captioning feed and cuts the sound out when something on the offensive list appears. You can even set it to print out a replacement word on the screen (as closed captions.) It has multiple filter strength settings, and they use it because television often has unpredictable degrees of obscenity. (TV ratings help, but as devout Christians, they dispise hearing things like "goddamn" etc which happens to be everywhere on TV.)
So far, they have been unable to find a product for DVD viewing that gives them a similar benefit.
I have NO problem with this product because the filtering is chosen by the consumer. This is absolutely fair use, just as backing up a DVD for personal use (which you legally own) is fair use. You are not "redistributing an altered copy", because the original is still in the dvd player.
No one's copyrights are violated. Copyright deals with changes and redistribution.
If this is a violation of copyright, then drawing mustaches on the pictures of an artbook you own and keep in your library is also a violation of copyright.
This is __NOT__ censorship!!! This is about controlling what you see in your own home. As long as you don't charge for admission, or dub copies of the altered version and distribute them, there is nothing illegal about this.
I'm quite amazed slashdot writers are upset about this. The maker is simply giving viewers a choice about what they want on their screen, without altering the original copy.
I watched a documentary about the Galapogos Islands the other day that ran through this, and all I saw were blue feet with pixelated blotches above them. No boobies at all.
Humph.
Virg
I don't think these are derivative works. In order to qualify as derivative works, doesn't it have to be distributed by the one who does the editing? When you rant against this device, it seems like that could also apply to a computer. It takes a little more work, but I've edited commercials, etc. from a movie I got off my DVD recorder.
I think this can also be analogous to GPLed code. I can use it, abuse it, cut it down to just the header files if I wanted to. But the moment I try to distribute that code, the GPL (and thus copyright law) kicks in.
No distribution, no copyright law.
Correct me if I'm misinformed.
...of when the DVD format was introduced might buy this player.
I remember the selling points of DVDs originally were
1) No rewinding tapes
2) better video and audio
3) instant edit of content - an "R" could become a "PG" on the fly because offensive material could be flagged and skipped.
That last point turned out to be bullshit, and there is no reason why DVD couldn't deliver on that promise.
Having flags for content would not be a challenge. What would be wrong with having a menu on an R film that would make it PG, following the editing guildlines commonly used for bringing a feature movie to TV?
"Besides, it will butcher movies, not replace the content with milder cuss words like on TV."
With multiple audio tracks on a DVD, certainly one could include a "TV safe" audio track. These are commonly produced for R films during production, because a movie might air on network television.
Slashdot has been the home of DeCSS arguments that include "it's my disc and I can do whatever the hell I want with it". Someone with a different moral bearing than you cannot present that same argument with their DVD collection?
The problem here is not censorship. The material is still on the disc should the viewer choose to see it. This is no different that using Tivo and it's fast forward functions.
You appear to be a rather intolerant person towards anyone with a system of faith and the desire to watch safe(r) television in front of their children. You call them "idiots" and "god bothering prudes". You are a bigot.
I suspect the real heart of your argument is a desire to shove something down the throat of these "idiots" because it pleases you to offend them.
Finally we can put Stern.. and real boobies on TV (other then the stiffs on CSI). I mean this with the Vchip, all we need is Cable/Satalite STB's that have the same thing in them.. then we let loose all the programming that people want. If some Religous Right moron complains then we just say 'why didnt you get a filtering box'. Finally a free and open sociaty where were parents get to decide what comes into their home instead of forcing they lame ass morals and cheezy belif systems on me. Its going to be hard for the FCC to pass large fines when there are devices parents can use that nullfies all their arguments for the fines.
In America, you do NOT have a RIGHT to own a VCR... (One that skips bad things or not) You have the RIGHT to FREEDOM... which gives you the PRIVLIDGE to own a VCR... With a PRIVILEGE comes RESPONSIBILITY... such as respect to the content creator and/or provider. Skipping commercials on TV (Tivo style) is bad because it hurts the business that NEEDS those commercials in order to stay in business. If everyone can just skip them at will, then no one will advertise and cable costs would skyrocket. The DVD your buying and paying for the FULL version... just like a ticket to the movies... Cover your eyes, or the player skips 1 second ahead of the nude shot... same thing... There will always be extremists who want "their" content shown only in the way they intended, but now they are infringing on your rights, FREEDOM. So we really shouldn't say that we have the "right" to do something here in America... as most of the stuff people argue, I mean... discuss on slashdot are more of a privilege given to us because we have the right to certain freedoms.
Now let's see how long it takes for this to suffer a similar fate ;-)
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
This device doesn't do that. They go out of their way to buy a device which blocks the parts of the movies they don't want to see. If they didn't know those parts were there, they would have just bought a normal, unfiltered DVD player.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Yes it does.
They go out of their way to buy a device which blocks the parts of the movies they don't want to see. If they didn't know those parts were there, they would have just bought a normal, unfiltered DVD player.
You're confusing the Player with the Movie. The consumer buys this player, they then go rent a movie and play it. They don't have to know the movie has "naughty bits" in it, they are blocked automatically. Done well they won't even know there ARE "naughty" bits that were blocked. You're voluntarily handing control of what you see to a religious fundamentalist group. Why would you do that?
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
Does the player have to be connected to a database over the internet? Only having 500 movies saved away is kind of a small selection, compared to the many thousands of films with objectionable content that could be put into the DVD player. Does this player have different "sensitivity" settings, where I could select it to render a film into a G-rating or PG, or PG13(allowing some swearing, or some violence, or some sexual things)? I know that borders on the current rating locks that can be set on most DVD players, but would be embraced by many parents.
And of course, the question that really matters is how well does it actually work?
I can't wait until The Passion of the Christ comes out on DVD and becomes a delightful five minute romp.
Watch what you're calling "mind-numbingly vapid". Throw in some Teletubbies to round things out with the alternative-lifestyle purse-carrying purple guy, and preschoolers need never leave the front of the TV.
btw, has anyone made Quake skins that look like Veggie Tales characters. It would be cool seeing Larry the Cucumber, Bob the Tomato, Junior Asparagus and the rest turn each other into salsa. Plus, the action would not be at all bloody because everyone knows that vegetables don't have blood, so who could object.
Of the 143.6 million people who watched the superbowl, lets say that only 1% of them were children. Of the fathers I've talked to, not one was happy about what his children had seen. I'd even go so far as to call them "freaked out." Outraged would be better. So, even if it's "relatively few," we're still talking over a million outraged parents.
You may say, "who cares? the population is over 291 million here." Yeah, but a million people can do a lot in Washington.
I find forced unskippable advertising on DVDs to be offensive, and one of the reasons I got my Apex DVD player was so I could easily bypass them. I would call that selectively cutting parts out of the movie.
Good point. The "clean" version of Clockwork Orange would be: 1. Close-up of his face. Music starts playing. 2. Before he even starts talking, they cut to him sitting in a hospital bed, where everybody is oddly nice to him. 3. End credits.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
That kid is going to grow up to be a fundamentalist evangelist, who raises money for missions to Africa (and a PAC for banning evolution from science classes) on her very own TV show. I'd bet money on it. :)
Personally, if I was going to pre-edit those damned Veggie Tales, it would be to remove the songs. Then again, that's true of most of what gets made for children these days.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
"Also, can someone name me a film that has 'filthy nudity and swear words' that kids would even be able to understand let alone enjoy if this was censored out? "
BLUES BROTHERS. (obviously the original)
A good film anyway, but would be a GREAT film that kids would understand and enjoy if the "R" rated language was removed.
IMHO, it might even drop to a G rating equivalent (although probably PG, from when Carrie Fisher blows up the apartment building with the LAW rocket launcher)...
"I am still puzzled as to what is so objectionable about the human breast. Find me someone who has never seen one."
Stevie Wonder
Ray Charles
> Because, to take your argument the next step, which I will do now, if you don't like the movie as presented to you, YOU DON'T HAVE TO WATCH IT.
But see, with this player, I don't have to take it to the next step unless I want to. I can watch it in its entirety, avoid it altogether, or watch the expurgated version, all at my preference. This device gives me one more stop along the continuum than your idea does, so what's the problem?
> Something in a PG-13 movie bothers you enough to not want to watch several scenes? Well then, if you are one of "Those people," you can simply not watch the movie and stick to G rated films.
Oh, THAT'S the problem. You think I shouldn't watch it at all if I find some parts offensive, idea be damned that it might be four words in a two hour movie that otherwise is a great viewing experience. You seem to think that every single example is G-rated or "can't do without the edits" and nothing in between. Why is that?
> But the real point is that an artist's work is meant to viewed as the artist intended. If you don't like the artist's work as it is, DON'T WATCH IT.
Oh, THAT'S why. You seem to think that movies are equivalent to gospel, and that any change, no matter what, completely ruins the viewing experience. Do you watch movies from start to finish every single time? Do you refuse to go to the theater to see a first-run because it might not be the "director's cut"? Do you ever watch a movie on TV that was originally filmed on 70mm? Then I guess you don't have much room to tell me which parts can be changed and which can't. With this device, I can choose to alter my own viewing experience, or that of my family's. Why is that your concern, or the "artist"'s concern, either? Again, this device gives me one more choice in a wide range of choices, so why is it bad? If I like the film so much that I feel I want to risk the "naughty bits" to get the whole experience, then I can do that.
> If you are not comfortable showing T3 to your kids unless many scenes are removed, maybe you all shouldn't watch T3 altogether.
If you're not comfortable not concerning yourself with what movies I show my kids and how I choose to do it, maybe you shouldn't comment altogether.
Virg
I don't sweat it too much if people are fighting over how to control my life.
When I get nervous is when everyone (except me) agrees on how my life should be controlled / altered.
=/
Grandparent is incorrect.
Okay... so Spielberg can take the guns out of the theatrical re-release of E.T. because he doesn't feel right with HIS KIDS watching it that way... But if the rest of us are offended by the swearing thats just to bad!
THAT my friends is hipocrisy... Hipocrosy is not a Mormon, or a Catholic, Protestant, Budhist, Atheist, or Christian radical trying to uphold their personal moral standards to the best of their ability.
My wife and I decided to no longer watch rated R movies a while ago. Because of excessive foul language we even avoid some PG-13 movies. Some of these R rated movies don't deserve the rating they are given, but we avoid those the same as a movie that has earned it in every way... My wife and I used to purchase between 5-10 DVDs a month. That number has sharply declined as movies of late seem to be more often than not getting the R rating... Now we purchase about 1-2 dvds a month...
If they don't like this VCR idea why don't they come up with their OWN IDEAS. Instead they blame piracy, they blame tivo, they blame, DVD Burners...
What makes me not buy is the fact that if I really like a movie (Like Terminator 2 Ultimate Edition) But no longer want to be subjected to the profanity every time I watch it... I can't make my own edited copy because I'd have to ILLEGALLY break the copy protection... I can't buy an edited copy because no one can "legally" sell any. And The producers themselves don't offer one... But they aparently had no problem letting USA Network modify the content for viewing on standard cable...
Most DVD players now already have parental controls that allow the dvd player to not allow playing of certain rated titles without a password... why not extend this idea to what is actually provided on the DVD...
Provide the original uncut theatrical edition at whatever it was rated but alteratively offer tamed down cuts of the movie on the same disc (So for example with terminator 2 you could choose... uncut. or a PG-13ish version). You could even build the DVD player so that unless you know the Password for the rated R capability your DVD player will only allow you to play the pg-13 cut, or if there is no such cut it just does as it does now and refuses to play...
My point is GIVE ME SOME KIND OF AN OPTION other than "don't buy this movie" obviously there will be movies where that is all I can do (something like Texas Chainsaw Massacre). But for the ones where I could have just as good an experience without all the swearing or a 5 second nude scene. (Terminator 2) I would like to have the ability to enjoy the film in with out the bits I would deem offensive. For now I will just continue on the path I am on. And with all my possible options deemed ILLEGAL and the content eventually becoming what I percieve to be absolute trash I will eventually will stop watching TV, DVD, Etc all together!!!
Not because of piracy, or dvd burners, or tivo... but simply because I can't choose what I want my media experience to be... This is about choice people! and choice is a good thing... If you don't like this VCR DON'T BUY IT. Problem solved! NO ONE IS FORCING EVERY HOME TO HAVE ONE!
> To return to your prior book example, if I sell a service to turn your pages of the most recent NYT #1 bestseller for you, and to skip pages 37 and 93 because you find the descriptions on those pages distasteful, that's okay. But Amazon cannot sell the book with those pages removed without prior consent by the rights holder, because they've changed the work itself.
Completely right, and also completely irrelevant. See, this player, and the service, do indeed equate to the page turning service. The person who buys this player must insert a proper, full copy of the movie in question. At that point, they download a pattern of blocks from Clearplay that instructs the player as to which parts of the movie not to show, based on the user's settings. At any time, the user can turn off the feature and the whole, unedited movie will run. Also, when they sell their copy, it'll be the full version. Clearplay isn't creating a derivative work, they're giving you a pattern so that your player can create the derivative work, for that one viewing, on that one player.
A particular viewer's choice to use this function does not violate your rights in any way, any more than having the list on a sheet of paper and using the player's remote to block/skip/mute in real time.
Virg
- Although RCA is the manufacturer of this Hollywood movie filtering technology, they had nothing to do with creating it. They're licensing it from ClearPlay, which has been in the DVD filtering biz since 2000.
- None of this has to do with fair use or derivative works (despite what Hollywood's attorneys may claim). The original DVD doesn't change; the only thing that varies is the individual viewing experience. That's the critical difference here. Hollywood shouldn't be able to control how you watch movies in the privacy of your own home.
- The Directors Guild is a lot more ticked off about this than the studios are. For the studios, it just offers another revenue stream, particularly from conservative Christians who don't want their kids watching movies laced with profanities and sexual innuendo. The directors are apoplectic about this, though, and they're still in litigation against ClearPlay.
- Europe has a tradition of "moral rights" where artists can control their works after a sale. But there's no such tradition in the U.S. See Drew Clark's article in Slate on the subject.
- More software DVD players are on the way from the parent company of TVGuardian. They'll be in Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Sears, Circuit City and dozens of other outlets within two months.
I wrote an article on this for Business 2.0 a couple of months ago, but they haven't run it yet. I'm also writing about this for a book I'm writing on the digital media revolution.
My view of all this? Directors, producers, and other traditional power centers need to acknowledge that their creative control does not extend into private living rooms. How we consume fluid digital media, how we interact with it and view it in private, should be solely our choice. -- J.D. Lasica
put a porn DVD in? Does it just show the FBI warning and then shut completely down?
Anyway.. I assume this is a *switchable* feature.
Im curious how they identify the 'naughty bits' anyway - is there some special coding added to movies?
If you are saying it's because you don't want swearing and nudity, don't rent a movie with swearing or nudity. There's quite a choice out there. Sure, there's often "obligatory swearing and nudity" to get a more adult rating, but what does this tell you about the artistic integrity of the filmmaker? You think you're going to pick up a great movie with that kind of thinking behind it?
If you want to get a movie suitable for kids, rent some Pixar or Spy Kids or Harry Potter.
The most dangerous thing about this invention is its limits. How do you know what will or will not be edited? OK, boobies and swearing maybe. How about discussions about drugs? or religion?
Don't buy one. It's a personal freedom to choose how much of something to view. Sure, I may offend a sushi chef by removing the cucumber slice from my California roll with a chopstick, before I eat it, but I have every right to do so as I have purchased that product. That's a basic right of property.
If an end-user modifies their own licensed copy of someone else's art to better suit their own tastes, be it paintings, movies, or sushi, then so be it. The end-user understands in doing so that it is not how the "artist" intended it at that point.
Have you ever added black pepper to a meal? Have you ever changed the Rims on a vehicle? Redecorated a house? All of these actions change an end-user's own copy of someone else's art to suit whatever reason. As far as it being automatic, well, what's the difference? Is it unethical for me to not finish a book, to skip the boring parts of a Kevin Costner movie, for pausing my television shows on a PVR? Where would civilization be today, if we didn't build on others' work to make it suit our own needs, wants, desires?
If it makes you feel better, consider the end user not as altering someone else's art to suilt their own morality, but reproducing their own interpretation of it. I guess someone never got to play with "Kai's Goo".
We all alter someone else's art once it's perceived. A painting is altered after it passes my cornea. Several times more in my consciousness. What's the difference of altering it slightly before perception if I choose to do so. I can hear Beethoven, and imagine it being done in dog barks or on a bad synth. Is it right, or ethical? What if someone made a machine to turn toy guns into ping-pong balls? While ignoring all other toys inserted in the machine? Some could say those toy guns are art. I for one think some weapons are very artistic.
Just my opinion. Feel free to re-arrange the sentances and words in your own mind, but hey, you didn't need my permission for that.
www.facebook.com/DareDefendOurRights
www.fairtax.org
Just imagine if someone finds a way to get an invert from that subsystem, i.e. it won't show anything unless it's non-boring. It's the only way attention will be paid to the fact that such system is far from ideal - who controls the controller? Which political party did the coders work for? Etc etc.
Just plain dumb. Ought to be filtered out. Er..
Insert
I look at it this way; I don't mind some
swearing and nudity, but sometimes I want
to share a movie with my younger relatives
and this would be a great way to do that
(since it will cut out a little bit or all
of that stuff). If you don't like it, then
don't buy one. Pretty simple!
I've seen things like this that go in one end of the coax/rf plug, and it claims to filter all the naughty words/etc. I've also seen this at walmart.
Sig: I stole this sig.
... price of $79, and what with the recent Janet Jackson 'wardrobe malfunction' this product will likely ...
Okay. It's the year 2004. Nobody has used the phrase 'what with' since 1926. Suddenly it appears here? Better call Jean-Claude Van Damme...
Can't wait to test this product's robustness on the South Park DVDs... ;)
Wonder if it overheats and explodes...
Yes, but you still have the option to (and view) the pages you tear out.
[SIG] Remember Mattel handheld games?
And you don't think that watching teenagers getting hopped up on milk laced with drugs for ten minutes is 'a bad thing'? Whoa...did you just prove the hypocrisy or what.
[SIG] Remember Mattel handheld games?
Even if it visibly and audibly censors, there is no way to censor the theme of a movie. Many parents might turnthis on and let their kids watch whatever they want, and if it's a movie about drug dealers, or a horror movie, how is it really going to censor terror or plot or drugs?
.sig: Open Source, Open Mind
This isn't about my values. As I said, I probably would never buy this product. I won't even rent the Blockbuster re-edit of "Requiem For A Dream," because I really prefer to see films as the director intended.
This is about allowing people who do have a certain set of values watch movies in whatever way pleases them. If they want a feature like the one offered by this player, it's their choice.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I wouldn't.
But if I was a member of said religious fundamentalist group, this feature would suit me to a tee! What's so wrong about letting people watch movies they way they want to watch them?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Ummm... how outsourcing the decision what offsets to skip to the "patch" vendor differs from doing it myself? Why should I be stripped of the right to both offer and acquire such patches? I suppose publishing a human-readable list of SMPTE offsets where "wrong" words or images appear is protected by The First - if so, why the machine-readable version of the same shouldn't be?
A better take on the same problem would be using some image characteristics instead of the timecode offset, as then the file could be used even for TV recordings, where the codes could differ. Any video-processing people here?
If it is my decision to do so, and I am fully informed about going to see "castrated" version, why not? My mistake for doing that, my loss.
That said, I should be able to see the cut-list, possibly with brief descriptions of what gets cut off. Maybe a list of timecode offset ranges with machine-readable description of the scenes would be the best way - I then could tell the machine what it should skip. (And yes, there should be categories like "long-boring-unimportant-dialogue".)
Such classification files then could be available in the way like eg. DivX subtitle files are.
It's also their choice to not buy the movies rather than voice an opinion to produce a movie player that restricts the rights of all; still their choice.
[SIG] Remember Mattel handheld games?
Well... and this differs from applying third-party cutting instructions exactly HOW?
MPlayer has a feature, EDL - a list of timecode offsets you want to skip during playback. If I make an EDL for a DVD, should I be banned from distributing it? If somebody other does the same, should I be banned from downloading and using it? If so, WHY? If it is my conscious decision to apply the EDL during playback, why I shouldn't be permitted to do so?
But in some way these kids (when grown up) will have influence on your kids, or worse, even influence YOUR future when they work in society. Kids who grow up with guns and aggression will be participating citizens in the future, also working at institutions and organizations you are depending on. So in a sense the more stupid and shortsighted we make kids now, it will backfire in the (near) future.
Okay. Suppose I take a microcontroller and wire it to the remote, so it counts seconds after I press Play, and then in specified moments tells the remote to send "FastForward" for specified time, then "Play" again. Then I feed the chip with the offsets for the specified movie. To complicate the matter a bit, let's say I got the file with the offsets from a friend with the same system.
How does it differ, according to your opinion, from pressing the buttons myself? From the same situation, but the timecode list being written on a sheet of paper and me using the tape-position display on the VCR? Where's the difference between ME pressing the buttons, ME pressing the buttons according to a list, a MICROCONTROLLER sending the keypress events by remote control, according to the same list, or the MICROCONTROLLER in the player itself doing the same? In all the cases, it's ME who watches the movie.
Then I can argue that Clearplay and RCA only give the customer the tools for creating the derivative content, because the customer creates it on his own by conscious decision, by switching on the autoskip capability and playing the DVD through it.
No meaningful difference against selling black ink for blacking-out "objectionable" parts in eg. a book (though in this case it'd be rather selling cut-off masks for individual pages and a can of spray paint).
Death doesn't always imply violence. Ever heard about old age? What about a nice case of Alzheimer? :)
As long as their USE is not mandatory, it's okay with me. The added cost to the player is small to none, as it's basically just a couple lines of firmware code, and as long as I can switch it off, I can avoid it having impact on me. If it in addition keeps the Religious Nuts quiet, it's a nice bonus.
Prepare EDL files for MPlayer and use that for playing the DVDs. As a bonus, you can edit out the FBI warnings. Not sure how legal it is to do, though, but I don't suppose that's of any practical concern for normal people.
Why is this flamebait?
Because most of the moderators here are idiot QlQueda sympathisers who only accept one worldview: THEIRS - everything else is wrong and will not be tolerated. What they really want is a mod option called "unclean"..
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Clearplay is building a buisness around making the fair use of DVD's you already purchased. Although I don't want to use their product, I hope they win in court, and it looks like RCA and WalMart are betting that they will. Think about it; this is a much more sympathetic (in the eyes of the court) class of defendant than Corley or Johansen. It may be difficult for a long time to persuade a court that Linux programmers have a valid reason to bypass the Content Scrambling System.
In the end, Clearplay's defense boils down to "how is this service different from fast forwarding through the parts you don't want to see?" Assuming that fast-forwarding (and using the restroom during commercials
You and I may not agree with this particular application, but to the degree that we want to be able to tinker with the property we own, we're on the same side.
i wont buy that player i want my hentai
From Apocalypse Now, a film which would undoubtedly be heavily censored by this device:
Kurtz: We train young men to drop fire on people. But their commanders won't allow them to write "fuck" on their airplanes because it's obscene!
Make waaaaaaaaaaaaay for the Karma Whore!
1) The list of movies from Clearplay.
Nope, "Shaving Ryan's Privates" didn't make the cut (but, Band of Brothers did). You can sort them by MPAA rating, which yields this: no NC-17, no G ratings. Some (but not that many) R ratings. Basically, it looks like it's about toning down PG and PG-13 movies for kids. For god's sake, maxwell - won't you think of the kids?!?
2) From the lawyers mouth - hear the lawyers discuss the case in front of a law class at Berkley. Every time they almost get interesting their lawyerly nature comes through, but hey - THEY REALLY BE LAWYERS!! (no joke, I seriously considered preparing an edit script). btw: favorite quote - "In the entertainment industry, it's not about the money. It's about ALL the money."
3) Bowdlerizing for Columbine?: Why American directors have no moral rights to their movies. (that's the subtitle, not a troll)
4) There Shouldn't Be a Remote Control on How We Watch DVDs, a Commentary by Ernest Miller of the Yale Law School.
I was just getting a little tired of seeing section 106 pasted again and again again.. sometimes in text, sometimes marked up in bold, sometimes in italic...
Now, maxwell, that mp3 file is 1:29:10 long - no more posting till you've heard the whole thing, mmkay?
If they think they can charge $10 more for doing something that you can legally do yourself, then they are as retarded as you are.
Here's the price list from CleanFlicks:OUCH! They are charging a minimum of $14 "for doing something that you can legally do yourself" -- and they are making money doing it. So, moron, do you still want to claim that I'm "retarded" for suggesting the a studio could sell a clean version of a movie for $10 more?
This virtual ass-kicking was brought to you by fmaxwell. Have a nice day!