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Bush Signs a New Fair-Use Bill
BostonGunNut writes "Today President Bush signed a bill that gives legal protection to companies that provide software that can automatically filter specific content from DVDs for personal use. This bill, called the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act, allows companies to provide filtering software without being sued into oblivion by Hollywood. The legislation also allows the Library of Congress to save and protect old movies and home videos that might otherwise be lost."
I'm not overly impressed by this, as you can probably tell. Can we at least do the decent thing, and require that companies that provide such "filtering" solutions rename the films they edit, and take the makers of that film off the credits, if they so wish? This basic right would be afforded to the movie creators by a studio that forces edits upon a movie before release. Why shouldn't it apply to those selling edits of a film against those same artists' wishes?
I guess, if it's on Dubya's desk for signing right now, then the answer is "No. We don't want to do this because we hate artists, either because we're right wing pseudo-moralists, or certain types of technie freeloaders."
I'm curious to know if the editing of movies or the editing on moral grounds is the only thing allowed by the bill, or if the "right" to edit goes further. If it does, we may have a massive loophole that allows people to alter anything they can redistribute. Ship a GPL'd app, for example, and include proprietary "edits" to the binaries. *shudder*
BTW, on the home movies thing, are they serious? Exactly when did private, deliberately unpublished, material become something to be preserved for future generations? Is this a poor write-up by the article submitter?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Doesn't dvdshrink have the ability to cut chapters from the disc that it copies? If this were advertised as a feature for removing material that one finds objectionable, wouldn't that make dvdshrink legal as well?
Getting parents, who are less tech-savvy than their kids, to use technology in order to prevent their teens from viewing gratuitous scenes.
Here's a crazy idea, and it'll save you the hassle of learning how to set the DVD-player's clock: teach them right from wrong, y'know, as parents are supposed to do.
Yes, it sounds crazy, but it just might be crazy enough to work.
Glad to see Congress is finally being a bit more honest about their backronyms.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
It seems like you can get anything done if you make it sound like a Christian issue. All this time we have been whining about the DMCA, the freedom to reverse engineer, etc. and nothing was done until this. If we framed the fair-use issue in terms of a personal right to censor the vile bile spewed by atheist Hollywood we would have won. Prehaps the Bible endorses file sharing. Someone should look.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
allows companies to provide filtering software
So of course this was done to permit commercial entities to provide filtering software to slice out "objectionable" parts of a copyrighted work before it gets passed to a viewer.
Will it protect individual citizens from doing the same thing - that is, providing filtering software - supposing that my criterion for obscenity includes what others call "advertisements"?
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I'm glad to see that already in the first 5 posts we have people trying to reconcile their "OMG BUSH IS TEH EVIL!!11" 'opinions' with their pro-fair-use opinions.
No blood for oil, right guys?
I totally have no problem posting this, but the crack-abusing mods will mod me down within minutes for daring to suggest that perhaps Bush is, you know, not evil. Anonymous it is, then.
DeCSS could be called a "filter" I think. C'mon everybody, quit bitching and start looking for loopholes.
A number of directors have clauses in their contracts that prohibit edits, cropping, etc. of their films without their permission.
I wonder how the courts will view legislation that essentially overrules these clauses; and what the MPAA, Hollywood and the Directors Guild are going to do.
Did two wrongs just make a right?
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
Oh, don't worry about having to program it yourself. Nope, ClearPlay (http://www.clearplay.com/) will figure out which parts are objectionable and auto-edit them out for you. Like those eeeeevil parts in the SpongeBob movie (no joke! see http://www.clearplay.com/Releases.aspx)
... just for the balance... If one can sell a "family friendly" add-on to a DVD movie to block "bad" scenes (which, IMHO, is fair -- one can always skip through scenes with a remote control, a little automation of that process should not be illegal) -- can one sell additional footage to turn a family friendly movie into a "frathouse-friendly" version with simulated actors engaging in, hmm, unexpected acts? It might even fall under the parody clause of the fair use...
Paul B.
This is the same legislation that make recording a movie in the theatre a felony with a potential three year jail sentence. I don't know how pro fair use it is. I don't think recording and pirating a movie like that should be legal, but it shouldn't warrant jail time.
Th
Write a V-chip style filter for video and/or audio streams (DVDs, WMV, AAC, etc.). This would require that have a method for decoding the stream. Pretty much protects you from the DMCA, as long as YOU don't distributes copies.
How sad. You knew it wasn't a troll or flamebait, but you modded it down anyway.
While it is clear you don't like this example of our lawmakers working hard (or hardly)... your comparison to the GPL isn't entirely well founded, and neither is my critique - but hey, this is /. .....
... well I think that is a bit more of a gray area. I haven't fully fleshed out what I think is right or wrong there, but personally I don't have a problem with these methods - but then again I am the kind of person who definitely prefers the "airplane version" or a film to the theatrical/DVD edition of the film.
Basically if you were to change a GPL'd work you would still have to adibe by the license, you are redistributing it - not changing the license.
The folks who edit a movie and resell it (ignoring DMCA / encryption breaking laws) are realistically no different to selling old CD's (or buying them) from a CD exchange. First Sale is a very important thing to me. CD's are generally scratched to some degree from these places - thus altering the data, intentionally or not - are they evil too? Besides, most places are very upgront about the media being edited, as well as making available lists of what they do edit.
Now for software that does this on the fly, or rentals
Of course, I haven't read the article or the bill itself, nor I am even a lawyer so my comments are nothing more than karma burning / whoring.
Me: "Ok, so lets see if I can make a "clean" copy of this DVD..."
Software: HELLO, WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO FILTER?
[ ] Sexual Content
[ ] Violence
[ ] Adult Language
[X] FBI Copyright Warning
Me: Perfect! Just the way I want it. Anyone have a blank DVD?
The day that historians found useful and interesting material in things like diaries and letters, that's when.
As for "deliberately unpublished", well, I would imagine that most people just never really thought about it one way or the other.
Picture this: you find an 8mm movie in the attic of an old house. None of the people are identified, and the previous owners, who bought the house in 1965, don't know anything about it. The movies show interesting glimpses of life on the home front during WW II -- Rosie the Riveter at the company picnic, recruits doing the Lindy Hop before they ship out. At the time, this wasn't history, it was just life, and seemed interesting only to those involved, and even they put it away and forgot about it. Now it might be fascinating, but wait -- who holds copyright? Under the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act , the answer was, of course, Walt Disney, but now perhaps that's changed, and for the better.
Of course, now that I've actually read the article, it looks like all it does is fund the LoC's efforts to preserve and restore old images, a good thing but not a copyright issue at all.
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
1: write bill and pass it to freind in congress
2: name bill Family values & (for this example) Biological warfare program
3: Pay other freinds in congress to acuse people who do not support the bill of "Being Unamerican" and "not caring about the children"
4: pay off ramainder / lobby
5: celebrate your multi billion dollar contract
This bill may have some usefull atributes that could help you lot over in the states be allowed to crack the CSS restrictions which is no doubt good (if it ends up being ruled as such).
Though i do worry about how they can tack the magic "family values" on to everything and magicaly pass it with little trouble...
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
My 2nd biggest complaint with ClearPlay is that you can't see a list of what was removed, i.e. "f*** at 23:20, brief nudity at 25:41" etc. My biggest complaint is that I can't make/modify my own filters, such as removing Hogarth's "guns are bad" speech from The Iron Giant. I love that movie (even though it's more a kids' movie), and I like to watch it with my kids, so I just hit the chapter skip button and poof - no more Hogarth railing about the evils of gun ownership. (And if guns are so bad, why did he take his BB gun with him when he went looking for the giant early in the movie?)
To sum it up, there's nothing wrong with ClearPlay. They're not forcing you to buy it, nor forcing you to use it. Much like proprietary vs. open-source, the issue is choice, or more specifically, do I have a choice at all?
-paul
Pistol caliber is like religion: everyone has their favourite, and theirs is the only right choice.
The GPL gives me a right to redistribute as long as I redistribute source, including of any modifications. Now, if I do indeed find a way of getting a GPL'd program onto a user's computer (which may not involve redistribution on my part), and independently release a binary equivalent of a "diff" file, the question I have is whether this law now makes this legal? After all, the GPLs power relies upon my agreeing to it. If I don't agree to it, all I have are "fair use" rights such as the one discussed. If I can edit something I don't personally distribute (or find a way of getting a judge to agree my distribution is seperate from my providing of an edit - and that's a question) then do I have a loophole?
This is a question, not a statement. I don't know how the law is worded. The law may explicitly be talking about DVDs, or more widely about movies, or more widely about any copyrighted material. It may only exempt edits made for "moral" reasons. It may only exempt edits that remove rather than add material. ALl of these would invalidate what I'm concerned about.
As for the CD scratches comparison, that's a random and unintended modification of data of the type the artist would know goes with the territory, not an intentional modification of the artist's work designed to change the actual meaning of what the artist was trying to say. (And, yes, no matter how gratuitous, those sex scenes and swear words the censorship mob are always trying to cut do make a difference to the overall meaning of a movie. That applies as much to removing Mr Pink beating a driver whose car he wants to hijack in Reservoir Dogs as it does Aileen Wournos being raped in Monster. The removal of either affects how we see the character. The latter's removal would render the entire message of the movie at odds with the maker's intentions. An ink blot that appears fleetingly on the 35mm film, however, wouldn't.)
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
In reference to the "family values" comment modded troll for some reason - he was right: Actually, it does, indirectly. Unfortunately this and other issues are conveniently ignored by the "religious right", their "interpretation" of the Bible, like that of most fundamentalist movements, tends to be inductive in nature. The number of Biblical quotes taken out of context, especially by "Evangelicals" is staggering. (See war, capital punishment, capitalism, and social justice issues, care for the ill and poor, etc., etc. most of the American Religious Right's take on these issues is misinterpreted at best and blatantly false at worst to what the "Gospel" (whether you believe in it or not, not the point here) actually says.) I am both an American and a Christian though at ties I am not so proud to call myself either because of the aforementioned issues, among others.
[what?]
Don't get me wrong -- the Orphan Works and new 110 exemption are both good, if very half-assed.
/. article is a huge misnomer.
But this comes with significant new civil and criminal penalties that are just apalling.
Oh, and this has nothing whatsoever to do with fair use. The new 110 exemption is a statutory exemption. It applies regardless of fairness, if the criteria it sets forth are satisfied. The title of the
You can read it here.
The breakdown is basically:
Title I -- very very bad
Title II -- good, but not as good as it could be.
Title III -- meh
Title IV -- good for rather limited uses, but also not as good as it could be
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Bush Lover!
I would suggest two ways around this: a program encouraging people to submit their diaries and other personal materials for public archival, and a program encouraging those who have found materials belonging to someone else to have it stored, with a release date - assuming the copyright holder is never found - set to at least 100 years from the best estimate available of when the material was made, and at least 50 from now, and with the material on-view but not copyable immediately (unless the rights holder is found.)
Both ensure an archive available to historians, while protecting the legitimate privacy interests of those who made the materials. We're not talking about materials ever intended for public consumption, we shouldn't treat them the same way.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Can we at least do the decent thing, and require that companies that provide such "filtering" solutions rename the films they edit, and take the makers of that film off the credits, if they so wish? This basic right would be afforded to the movie creators by a studio that forces edits upon a movie before release.
No, and IIRC, it actually takes care to avoid such a possibility arising. I'd have to poke around with the effects on federal trademark law and preemption of state laws. It hasn't been the part of the bill that I've been most concerned with, and I've been kind of busy as of late.
I'm curious to know if the editing of movies or the editing on moral grounds is the only thing allowed by the bill, or if the "right" to edit goes further.
Morality is not a factor. You can render imperceptable whatever you want. If you don't like the mushy parts of the latest star wars film, but like the fight scenes, you can make an appropriate EDL.
And no, it only applies to motion pictures (which includes TV, given the way the law is written). Not other kinds of works, like books or software, or whatever.
Although I don't see what's wrong with cutting out parts of books for one's own consumption, if that's how you get your kicks, or selling the same, if you're upfront about it. It's not as though the original artist is harmed or is unable to compete.
BTW, on the home movies thing, are they serious? Exactly when did private, deliberately unpublished, material become something to be preserved for future generations? Is this a poor write-up by the article submitter?
There's some funding for the National Film Preservation Board, or whatever it's called, but it's not as though they can march in and make you hand stuff over. They just get to buy things and preserve them. Maybe preserve deposit copies at the LoC too. You can probably calm down.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
If GWB and the Republican Party really cared about the Constitution and restricted government/lower taxes, why do they keep passing bills that fit the needs of special interests--i.e., their interests?
For completeness, the Democrats are no better.
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
Ignore the first part of the parent. I've just read the bill, and it's explicit about only covering audio and video. No problems with the GPL, unless you try to license your next blockbuster under the GPL.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Of the presentation and always has.
Volume, balance, mute, color, brightness, contrast, pause, FF, REW, and finally... EJECT!
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
This is a good point. What about editing the film so _only_ the nudity, sex, and violence are left? In "preserving" "fair use" rights, do they preserve equal rights?
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
I can just see it now, "Debbie Does Dallas, Bible Belt Edition". Marc
That's why I asked whether, at the very least, an artist could at least have their name removed from an "edited" version if they didn't consent to the edits. It strikes me as remarkably abusive of the artists to not do so, and is actively misrepresenting them and their works.
That a law would be passed not only allowing this, but actually encouraging it and doing everything possible to prevent an artist disassociating themselves in any practical way from an edit, I find very sad.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
We can finally watch Episode 1 without Jar Jar in it!
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
2) George W. Bush is an important historical figure. Will we see every little thing he produced in the LoC? I doubt it. If we ever see any of it, it will be what GWB wishes us to see at the GWB Presidential Library. The LoC won't see any of his personal, private stuff. Given that, why should it be allowed to possess anyone else's, then?
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Does this law make The Phantom Edit legal? Anyone know where I can get a copy?
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
The legislation also reauthorizes a Library of Congress program dedicated to saving rare, culturally significant works, such as home movies, silent-era films and other works that are unlikely to be protected by the big studios.
The videos of you egging your neighbor's house on Halloween aren't significant. Videos of Hitler having a barbecue with Rommel are. The Zapruder film is. Home videos of 9/11 are. You see where this is going?
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
Actually, I recall Lucas has always been fairly liberal with the whole people setting things in his universes thing, and initially didn't have a problem with The Phantom Edit until it blew up into a thing that looked like would take sales away from the real thing.
I can imagine he'd be relatively happy with a technology that allows people to buy Star Wars DVDs and view edits of them. A rare case.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
The law does not allow you to make or distribute a copy of the modified work with teh deleted scenes. It only allows you to sell and use technology that removes segments to create the modified work. So, it would be legal to distribute a device that transforms The Phantom Menace into The Phantom Edit, but not to distribute The Phantom Edit by itself. It seems to me that this would be tricky to accomplish with a DVD player unless it is specifically designed for it, but would be easier with software on a computer (but would DeCSS be required?!?).
Oh, someone did! Even though it was completely wrong (the first five messages aren't reconsiling anything, dumbass)
Modulo any clauses I haven't read closely enough, I see this new law as possibly serving two audiences -- it can be used to allow hiding certain scenes in movies, be they scenes that contain nudity, foul language, violence, or anything else deemed objectionable. It can also be used to hide scenes that *do not* contain these things. So we have an odd bedfellows situation: both those who, for instance, want to keep views of women's breasts off of their TVs and those who only want to see women's breasts are served by the same law and the same list of indices describing where one can find such images.
Digital Citizen
Seriously, you say this is for "culturally significant works." Who decides if my home movies are or are not culturally significant? More to the point, how can they make this decision without first seeing my home movies? I'll bet this law gives them the right to accquire anything they want, then later decide what to keep. This opinion is based not on my reading the law but rather my perceptions of those who make our laws.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Doing so for yourself is entirely different to doing so for other people. I don't have a problem with most personal uses of copyrighted-by-other's material, but when it comes to saying "Hey everyone, do you want to watch a cleaned up version of XYZ?", and selling edits and presenting the film as a merely sanatized version of the original that's fundamentally the same only without the material-it-would-be-morally-wrong-to-even-view, then, yes, I have a big problem with it. I think it's misrepresenting the original artist to put, under their name, something that clearly they wouldn't say represents what they were trying to do and say at all.
So would you object to it, so long as it was clear that the edits were Alice's Edits of Bob's Movie? Just because Alice has made an EDL doesn't totally divorce it from Bob. Now they're both involved. So long as everyone is clear and up front about it, I don't see a big problem. Alice is not putting it forward as entirely her own work, and Bob is not having it put forward as entirely his either. Frankly, for Bob to disassociate himself from it would be misleading -- he is associated with it to some degree.
Importantly though, I don't give a crap about artistic integrity. I just don't want the audience to be confused or misled about what it is that they're buying or watching. If they're fully informed, I'm happy.
And looking through the relevant part of the law, it appears that 1) there are no federal trademark remedies against the 110 editors, 2) they do have to include a conspicious notice as to the fact that it's edited, 3) I'd still have to investigate as to state causes of action, but I think that Congress' intent is fairly clear.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Will this allow sites such as Archive.org to keep copies of movies? If I remember correctly, they fought a lawsuit to store such things under the fair-use clause but lost.
culturally significant
;-)
Like the Paris Hilton video?
I think that qualifies as a "home movie"...
--Phillip
Can you say BIRTH TAX
You're a fucking idiot, dude. If you honestly have to ask ANY of those questions you seriously need to shut your computer off and go outside.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
So if someone sues, would it then go to the court as a Family Entertainment and Copyright Act Legal Matter, thus giving a case of FECAL Matter?
It'll be interesting to see how this plays out in the long term. As the capability for filtering becomes universal in DVD players, I expect Hollywood to begin supplying their own filters.
Then there will be no limit to the amount of pornography and violence in the average film. Unfiltered it will be XXX. Push the appropriate button to tone it down to X, R, PG-13, G - whatever you want.
In that case you might be interested in NWA - Straight Outa Compton - Explict Content ONLY version.
2^5
Unfortunately things have gotten to the point where it is culturally significant.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
No, this is about _editing_, not just renaming the same thing...
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
Is this a poor write-up by the article submitter?
Why don't you RTFA and find out?
If you make a different movie, one that an artist whose work you "based it upon" wants no part in, then why name it after the original work, and why include the artist's name? Answer: because you're still wanting to trade off those names, you want people to assume what you're producing is actually some form of the real deal. And it isn't. If the relevent politicians and lobbyests were being honest and respectful, they wouldn't have spent this amount of effort trying to avoid movie houses from invoking trademarks. They're being dishonest here. Blatently. I don't care how reasonable a "standard disclaimer", doubtless added to the hundred or so already attached to every movie, might look.
I never accused you of anything of the sort. You made it clear in the GGP that as far as you're concerned, it's all about the money:It's not as though the original artist is harmed or is unable to compete.
Ah. Yes. If people are watching some bullshit you didn't do that nonetheless has your name on it, you're not harmed. Because you can still make money. Right. I just wish this kind of crappy souless materialism wasn't so common these days. Your values are definitely not my values.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
If you make a different movie, one that an artist whose work you "based it upon" wants no part in, then why name it after the original work, and why include the artist's name? Answer: because you're still wanting to trade off those names, you want people to assume what you're producing is actually some form of the real deal.
Not necessarily. As I said, it's a fact. If I buy a car, rice it out, and sell it, the fact that it's been modified doesn't change that consumers are best informed knowing what it originally was; if I just said it was a car, then how can people make a careful buying decision not knowing if I started with a sports car or a compact? Also, trademarks are only source identifiers, never good identifiers. Usually the titles of individual works cannot be a trademark, since this a) doesn't tell buyers where it comes from, and b) would interfere in uses of the work not covered under the copyright monopoly. If I reprint a public domain work, I'm allowed to use the name of the author and the work in doing so, as long as I don't mislead people.
You made it clear in the GGP that as far as you're concerned, it's all about the money
No, as far as copyright law and policy should be concerned, it's all about the public interest, and with regards to what aspect of authors we use in incentivizing them to create, we use their greed.
Copyright is utilitarian; it's economic. It's inappropriate to entertain silly notions of some sort of romanticized kind of authorship.
This is because the objective of copyright is to slake the public's unquenchable thirst for works and freedom with respect to those works, as much as possible. That's it. It's a noble goal, but one that should be approached pragmatically. It certainly doesn't involve caring about artists, only caring about how to exploit artists just as a farmer exploits his milk cows, or whatever.
This has always been the way copyright works, and it's a good system. We're just screwing it up lately, in no small part due to people with attitudes like your own, who can't treat it rationally.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Speaking of chili, I have something to say that's completely unrelated to it, and this is it.
Long ago that was true, but realistically is there any reason to expect the publisher lobby won't be able to extend copyright terms forever?
And most ricers aren't tricking out a car to turn a sports car into a Sedan.
As far as the constitution goes and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a predominantly US-written document, it's not purely economic. The Constitution doesn't limit the author's rights to those that are economic, and copyright law doesn't generally allow something simply because it doesn't hurt sales and revenue. The UN Declaration of Human Rights goes further and talks explictly about moral rights. So historically, you're talking out of your arse.In any case, despite you appearing to think the contrary, you just agreed with me. You are only interested in the money. You think the only way an artist can be harmed is if their ability to make money from their own works is compromised. You have little understanding of why people produce art, and why they'd want control over how its used in their lifetimes, especially when it's attributed to them.
I fail to see how your view is more "rational" than mine. In your world, artistic integrity doesn't exist. No rational artist would create works of any serious value and merit in a world in which someone with an agenda hostile to their's can take that work and push it as a legitimate version of the original. The bill that's passed is all about that. It explicitly and needlessly allows something to happen that in any other context would result in defamation suits. And why? So that "editors", currently the majority of which sympathetic to the views of the administration, can pass off their works as those of other's.The truth is, you're an extremist. It's one thing to say "You know, people should be able to build upon other's works", it's another to claim that people should have views, works, opinions, et al attributed to them that clearly they wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. You support the latter. Beyond a simple, generic, hatred of artists, something the language you choose more than hints at, I can't see any rationale for your views, and a generic hatred of artists is anything but rational.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Copyright was never about privacy. Until pretty recently, works weren't even covered by copyright unless explicitly declared as such.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.