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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."
But 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?
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]
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.
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.
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"?
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.
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.