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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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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!
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.
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]
What kind of fucked up system is that?
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'll buy one. This is great. I can continue to watch movies without excluding my daughter. I don't care about all the sex scenes, and if it bleeps out swear words, I can probably figure out what was said.
Its not censorship if you willingly accept it and even embrace it. Censorship is bad, don't get me wrong, but in my house the parents are dictators and what (very young) children view is censored. That is just good parenting.
[FromTheMorning]
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.
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
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.
Uh, they aren't taking boobies away from you. It only gives that option to those who want to see the movie, but don't care for the "naughty bits".
I have to applaud RCA for providing this product. It will make everyone happy, if they would shut up and think for a minute..
1) RCA makes money on an innovative product
2) Producers make money selling more DVD's to people who would otherwise find their content objectionable.
3) Consumers get to enjoy more movies.
Uh hello, this is a win-win for everybody!
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
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
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!
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 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.
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.
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
2) Producers make money...
3) Consumers get to enjoy more movies.
Uh hello, this is a win-win for everybody!
Except the creators of the movie, who find their work has been bowdlerised without their permission. The creators (the producer at least) usually have the option of pulling a movie from a market rather than cutting it. As a last resort, if the studio overrides them, the director can pull their name from the credits to show that they disapprove of this. Creators have moral rights on their works.
Wikipedia:
Alan Smithee is a pseudonym used by the director of a movie if he wants to disown it. A director cannot do so on his own, however, he has to get permission to do so from the Directors Guild of America, which has a number of rules for it, the most important being that it is only used when someone else (for example the editor or the studio) has changed the movie to something different than what the director intended.
...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
Censorship is BAD. It always has been and it always will be.
Did Quentin Terrintino make Kill Bill so that a six year old can watch it? No they didn't. That's why all the movies have that little thing called a "rating". If you don't like nudity or excessive violence or sexual innuendo or drug use or cursing, then you won't watch a movie that's rated "R".
The people that make these movies do so because they want people to see them the way it was made. The director takes the script and makes it his/her own work of art. Censoring even one word from the movie is detracting from the vision the director had when the movie was made.
If you want to enjoy more movies you should try getting that tree branch out of your ass, and stop taking things so literally. If you find a lot of movies to be offensive in some way, it might be possible that your taste is the problem, and not the movie producer's.
Learn something new.
4) Parents can shift even more of their responsibility towards an inanimate object.
So the list of entities responsible for bringing up a child and therefore liable when he gets fat, anti social and/or psychopathic now includes:
McDonalds
The police
School teachers
DVD Players
Not exactly what I call win-win.
All little boys want to see boobies. It's the duty of a parent to talk about this with their child, explaining that it's natural to like looking at naked flesh but that it's not the answer to everything. What's not their duty is to flip a switch on a DVD player and then sue the company when, 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. 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! This whole thing smacks of finding a problem for a solution.
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?
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
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.
That's a ridiculous fucking statement.
I go see a movie with my wife. She covers her eyes during the disgusting/scary parts and tells me to tell her when it's safe to look. How is that any different? By your line of reasoning, I should tell her to "try getting that tree branch out of your ass" and make her open her eyes. The only recourse she should have (according to you) is to leave the theater.
This is a machine I can CHOOSE to buy and I'm telling RCA to fast forward over content that I say I don't want to see. Are you telling me I shouldn't have that right?
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.
You're missing the point, you can edit or watch your copy of a movie however you like. When you distribute that version to others, even as a "patch" to the original, you cross over a line. The director's name is still on it, but it isn't what he signed off on. If these players are sold widely (they are in Walmart after all) they could even become the way most people saw the movie; as some strait-laced group of censors determined.
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
Right this player gives you the option of seeing the movie how you wish. You still purchase the copy of the movie how the director intended. Now it is your to do with as you wish.
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.
Good god people, this isn't censorship. No one is pointing a gun to your head telling you to buy the thing. This is a simple techonological solution to something some people think is a problem. Censorship is when the government tells you, you can't print or say something. If you don't like the product don't buy it.
For the record, I don't intend to buy it because movies that it would be used on I don't let my kids watch. I really don't see a need for it but some people do. If RCA can makes some money off these people the more power to them. RCA gets cash for a product people want, and these people get a product they want.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
Censorship is bad. It always has been and always will be. But censorship is imposed by an outsider. This is a choice made by the viewer, to view this movie on this device, as opposed to a conventional DVD player. Similar to the made by the listener to listen to music on an IPOD, as opposed to on the CD, as the people making the music intended.
If you support fair use (as your sig indicates that you do), why do you condemn people viewing the movie as they wish do view it?
Do you violate the creator's vision by listening to tracks on a CD out of the sequence intended by the creator? What if the whole Album is intended as one creative unit, such as The Who's Tommy, or Pink Floyd's The Wall?
I metamoderate, therefore I am
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 right!
Because obviously the DVD player comes with a copy of Vice City. You can't buy them separately.
And it's ok to lump all Wal-Mart shoppers and the entire company into one group, because it delays hard reality hitting my narrow-minded ideology for just a little while longer.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
If parents don't want their children to watch something, or find it offensive to watch themselves, why should they be not allowed to raise their kids the way they see fit?
I don't understand why individuals are getting bent out of shape because other people want to live their life a particular way. I don't agree with a lot of things that other parents do but you know what? They are not my kids. I don't have any more right to say what your kids can and can't do than you do mine.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
Killfiles.
Pop-up blockers.
Auto-editing DVD players.
Commerical-skip button on TiVo.
Seems to me all 4 of these do basically the same thing, pre-edit something so the user doesn't have to see something they know they won't want to.
If you object to this Auto-Censoring DVD player, then shouldn't you also object to the other 3 things above? The user is bowderlising the content someone else provided, without their permission.
--Kirk
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?
Actually, I think a better idea woul be a law that every programme break on every channel must include a 20 second shot chosen at random from a library of films of naked people perfoming every common bodily function from eating to picking their nose to masturbating to having a shit to ... taken from every angle and from every distance from 2 inches to 10 feet. Then everyone will have the choice of either getting rid of their TV or learning to cope with the human body. The resulting appolplexy among those who can't cope will do wonders to improve the species. Of course it will destroy the only profitable segment of the online economy.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
Anyway, as a result, there are certain (pretty decent) movies that she simply will not go see, just because of the swearing. This would allow her to see the movies.
As for the stuff with kids, I think that we shelter our kids from sex WAY too much anyway; it makes it (sex) seem like something bad or taboo, that you don't discuss, and only Bad People think about. Well, (feigning shock and disbelief) everybody thinks about sex. Kids do to and, as a result, the kids think that they are Bad People. Contrast that to movies & TV, which often take it too far the other way. Characters are seen a prude/rube/naive/odd if they don't have fairly frequent sex, or are at least seeking sex. Both give an unhealthy view of sex; it's not dirty (well, sometimes it is....but in a good way) and it's not to be the central focus of your life. What you wind up with is one group of people who think sex is a dirty little secret, and another that confuses sex with love. Either way, they can wind up obsessed with it.
Swearing and violence, however, are a different story. Swearing has the very useful function of letting someone know when you're really upset, or really mean business. It's a way of getting people's attention without yelling. Frequent use of cursing removes this very useful communication tool (and I'm not being sarcastic). As for violence, you also get a desensitization an acceptance of it after constant exposure. It's not that movies cause people to go kill, it's just that it wears down the barrier a little; it eats away at our inhibition to violence. And we do have such an inhibition, learned or innate. Most people do not resort to violence unless they think it necessary (please, no poltical commentary).
There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.
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
Moral arguments are, by definition, based on an appeal to authority, tradition, and/or emotion. These are all classical logical fallacies. Contrast this to ethical arguments, which are built on sound logical reasoning and as such are objective and provably correct (or provably false).
As an example, consider the following: Is the act of consentual sex between unmarried adults, in and of itself, immoral? Depends on who you ask -- religious fundamentalists would say definately yes (citing scripture as their authority), most other people would say definately not. Is it unethical? I would argue no, on the basis that does no objective (IE mesurable) physical or mental harm to the participating individuals.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
My folks let my litter watch R rated pretty much as soon as we could fit it in the beta (yeah we went with betamax first). They also took us to see racy movies like Rocky Horror in the theater when we were wee. I wound up coming up with a much stronger set of codes and morals than most of my friends. I don't really think that "indecency" affects the youngins as long as you prepare them for it.
There are things that happen in movies that are descriptive of a despicable/vile act (but it's just a movie). Then there are things that happen in real life that are 1/10th as "vile" as what happens in the movie, but because they really happen, those have a higher chance of scarring/affecting someone. Sure, not everyone going through my same set of "starting conditions" would have come out the same, but they wouldn't have been doomed to a life of booze, knives, and semen-encrusted pants (whatever that means).
I think that it's good that you soon will be able to buy a product that can babysit your children for you. We buy so many other things that make our lives easier, and what better way to celebrate the specialization of labor.
I would like to be one of the guys payed to flag the naughty naughty bits.
On a completely seperate note, I think that we are entering an era where databases such as these, will spring up, and it will be interesting to watch the market forces act with their darwinian might.
postmodernsideshow.com
... 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...
How about a novel idea: skipping the whole movie? Aside from a few movies, why would parents allow their children to watch bits and pieces of a movie? If the movie has a merit, then the parents should sit and watch with their childrean and explain what those scenes mean. Otherwise, tell the children not to watch the movie.
Now that everything has been censored, should the parents allow the children to watch pr0n? Sometimes, I don't understand why people have kids if they don't want to take the time and the responsibility for them.
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.
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.
I keep seeing references to this kind of thing in the comments, and I can't think of any (and certainly not many) films were it was obviously gratuitis. Could you give some examples?
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
> But ads are part of a package, not a "work" in the artistic sense.
If I buy the original Mona Lisa, very much a "'work ' in the artistic sense," I have every right to shred it. Or, to make it more clearly related to the topic, what if I think she's smiling and, since smiling is (obviously) the devil's work, I wanted to use a marker to cover up the corners of her mouth?
Do I have the right to do that, since it is not what the original artist wanted?
I might get screamed at by millions of people, but I could do it (if I had the money & desire).
If you argue this is invalid because the painter is dead and we can't tell if he would hate me for it, imagine that it is a COPY (just as a DVD is a COPY -- the original is data on Hard Drives or on film, the original was not in DVD form) of the Mona Lisa that I "improve" (IMRZO). I can buy a copy of the Mona Lisa for a few bucks, but if I change it no one cares. It's damned close to the original, except possibly for the missing brushstroke details, but live-action-to-film loses detail as well.
Just because you claim that "moral rights" means that the creator(s) can restrict what you do with their stuff, it is not necessarily legally (or morally) true. Actually, I think morality has absolutely nothing to do with this. It's a made-up term so that creators can feel like they have more control that they do not have. In some ways, it is valid, but just because you can remotely construe something to fall under it, it does not mean it SHOULD.
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?
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!
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?
The problem is that Clearplay has violated the movie owner's derivative rights by making a script (cues for blocking video or sound at specific times) based on the owner's movie.
.. but what good is all the violence in the world unless it is tempered with limitless sex? Bring on the limitless sex... ! --GWAR
What then makes it worse is that they sell/distribute the derivative work into a market that the owner has not yet chosen to go--sin enough to negate the fair use argument, I'm pretty sure (IANALY).
If you can't distribute a CD full of Duke Nukem maps or a Seinfeld Trivia game because they are (compliations of) derivative works, I don't know how you can distribute cue scripts that are themselves derivative works.
They'd probably do better figuring out how to overwrite specific spots on the DVD with neutered content, reselling the DVDs, claiming they weren't doing anything original, and staying out of the 9th circuit (which already has unfavorable precedent on pasting-up transformations of content).
Here's an idea: if there's really a teeming market for sanitized, family-friendly content, why aren't companies producing original, family friendly movies? I mean, get real: the argument for sanitized content goes something like: (1) my neighbor makes cool stuff, but I wish it didn't use words like "heck" and "dang"; (2) because it's a free country, I can just take it and change it without her permission; (3) I can sell those changes to everyone who thinks like me. Get bent!
In this case it was about what btis of the human body people want to pretend don't exist.
All kids are different.
Well, yes some are more screwed up by their parents than others. (Insert Philip Larkin poem here).
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named