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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."
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?
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.
Perhaps a new breed of people forcing their moral values on the entire country will emerge but hopefully they won't be the ones in control for long if at all.
I never understood why parents couldn't shut the tv off, or better yet, use a vchip like device to stop kids from watching both violence and sex. Of course, these days the news contains a lot of bothBut you have little or no control over this either. You're relying on the good and kind folks at ClearPlay to decide what parts you should not see and hear.
Does their worldview = yours?
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.
I, for one, am excited about this technology and what it will do for my family because I don't always have the time to sit and watch a dvd myself before watching it with my kids, so that I can shut off the "bad parts." I would happily pay for a service that I could trust to prescreen these for me. Which is what this is.
As far as the "old religious farts" dieing off, I hate to dissapoint you, but I'm 22 years old.
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Wait, I'm confused...what's wrong with home schooling? It seems like it would be viewed as a good thing by many on this site. I'd like to keep my kids out of public or private schools (don't have any kids yet, though) because I don't want them to have to say "Under God" in their pledge of subservience or have to even be introduced to Creationism as if its something other than fodder for morons. In Georgia they considered banning the word evolution in textbooks in favor of "Change Over Time" (I think). I just don't want the pinko fascist Christians giving my kids a bad education! Besides, if my child goes to a public school, and things are similar to now when he would be of that age, he would be left behind anyway.
And the muscular cyborg German dudes dance with sexy French Canadians
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.
True, true...
But you might be surprised how many PG and PG-13 movies have language that many parents don't want their children to hear (again, very young children, I'm not a total prude!)
[FromTheMorning]
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.
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?
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.
What makes it so funny is that these people must think of themselves as superhumans. They are sure that this type of thing would corrupt other minds, but for some reason, their own is fine after watching it.
As for the "Under God" shit, your child would not forced to say it although he or she might be encouraged to since many others I'm sure would. Coming from a VT public school I'd say I had it pretty lucky, we didn't even do the pledge, we chose to spend the extra time socializing, playing Uno and other such activities.
Might add, if you have a child, consider bring him or her up in an environment more suitable to your beliefs or at least more accepting of alternatives. My school had prayer sessions in the morning in one room where kids could go if they wanted, everyone else hung out in the cafeteria until it was time for school. Evolution was taught as fact and creationism was discussed only because there are people out there that believe it. Generally the two concepts can co-exist but people assume "god" created humans and not single celled organisms which later evolved.I think a school should be a place of dicussion, I would have no problem with my child being exposed to christianity or any other religion as long as they aren't made to believe its correct, it should be a dicussion about how religion is applied to culture and ultimately how it effects what we see on TV and such. Why was there ever a time on tv when you couldn't say "pregnant?" Nothing wrong with talking about how religions view sex and how atheists see it.
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.
IFAIK Walmart is still selling "Vice City". Moral of the story: While saying "fuck" is bad it's ok to beat the shit out of a prostitute with a golf club.
Welcome to Amerika. Please leave your common sense ideas at the border.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
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.
As much as you're trying to paint out the US viewpoint as merely being culturally different to the European viewpoint, and rather weakly trying to imply that the Europeans are simply being closed-minded for not "understanding" the US cultural view, there are fundamental, absolute differences that sorta kinda make it pretty obvious that the US viewpoint here is 'twisted and nutty'. You cannot claim this is just "a different viewpoint", there are some pretty obvious moral and ethical discrepancies between showing, say, a nipple (which is probably the ultimate, natural display of love, affection, bonding and nurturing), and showing graphic displays of humans blowing one another up.
Or do you really think that blowing people up is natural, normal and positive for humanity? Perhaps that would explain US foreign policies.
What is relevant is that copyright law gives the copyright owner the right to control the production and distribution of derivitive works. Making a "no-naughty-bits" derivitive of a movie for your own use probably falls under fair use. However, as with the MP-3 debate, there's a very ill-defined border between legal fair use and illegal copyright infringement.
Directors and other artists working on a movie are usually hired by a studio or production company to make the movie. In legal terms, this makes the movie a work for hire -- copyright and creative control belong to the people who paid for it, unless they contractually gave those rights to someone else.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
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...
Relatively few people were freaked out about it. The loudest voices were those of the opportunistic politicians who were looking for some political hay to make it look like they were doing something useful
I like the idea of the censor chips because then broadcasters will be free of the censors (since that function will be rightly in the hands of the viewers) and will be free to include nudity and even sex on prime time TV without fear of government reprisal.
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?
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?
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Canada here...
Also had in school:
Clockwork Orange
La Haine
Menace To Society
Reservoir Dogs
Apocalypse Now
etc..
Ok, Canadian here too, but never saw any of those in school. I can understand Apocalypse Now, especially if you were reading Heart of Darkness. I'm not sure why Reservoir Dogs would be a good candidate for an English class, though I could certainly see it in a film class.
I did take a quarter credit course in films, but all he played was Alfred Hitchcock stuff. It was interesting to see Psycho (don't know if I ever would have rented it), but it would have been much more thought provoking to see both Psycho and something more modern like 8 mm (I haven't seen that either), and discuss the differences.
Clockwork Orange, also interesting to watch if you'd been reading the book.
I don't think most of these titles would fly in the U.S. though; I mean, they're burning Harry Potter books down there, because it's too risque for them.
You know a movie that would be a good topic-starter for a media class... Natural Born Killers.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Well said---but American Morality Policy will brook no interference from rational voices. This isn't a rational thing, it's a "close your eyes, ears and mind" thing, ingrained from early childhood. When this mixes with an overwillingness to force others to do your bidding, you get laws banning this sort of thing for no good reason that you or I can see. Fortunately, I can still get some uncensored stuff. The web is difficult to censor, and my Cowboy Bebop DVDs are pristine in all their occasionally breast-embellished glory.
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.
Believe it or not, I actually would rather my (fictional, and will probably stay that way) children watch violence rather than gratuitous sex.
To me, sex is something kids are more likely to engage in unwisely than violence. Violence, if done right, particularly in a good war movie, doesn't glorify itself, in my opinion. After and during watching Saving Private Ryan, particularly the first time, I thought how glad I was that I'd probably never have to do those things, while having an immense ammount of respect for those who did.
I think that violence for the wrong reasons has worse effects than sex for the wrong reasons, but that's a different matter than watching it. I think kids watching violence, particularly if it's not glorified, are less likely the go attack someone than they are to have wanton sex after watching years of TV and movies obsessed with sex in all its glory.
I'm sure many of you will disagree. Both have been with us since the first human and will until the last human. But if I had kids, I'd rather them watch too much violence than too much sex.
And yes, I am American, so *THPTHHHHPT*.
BTW, this opinion has nothing to do with religion, as I'm an atheist.
Sexuality is natural
Look, I'm all in favor of pornography, but let's not confuse it with a healthy expression of sexuality. Objectifying the female body on Page Three of the daily paper, or Justin Timberlake pawing at Janet Jackson's costume while singing about getting her naked by the end of the song, is not the baseline of normal sexuality that I would want my kids to pick up from the media.
Should sexually suggestive material be allowed? Absolutely. Should it be completely unrestricted? In my opinion, no. Perhaps the weight given to sexual and violent content by the rating boards ought to be re-evaluated, but they have a good reason for existing.