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."

Comments

There's a great idea...

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

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.

Family Entertainment and Copyright Act Legislation

[BandwidthHog]

Glad to see Congress is finally being a bit more honest about their backronyms.

"family values"

[Zork the Almighty]

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.

Questions, Please

[4of12]

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"?

I have - and LIKE - ClearPlay

[crimethinker]

After much research, we bought one of the RCA players with "ClearPlay" functionality, and signed up for an annual membership. Don't tell me you've never seen a movie and said, "that was great except for ..." How about Kevin Costner's butt in Dances With Wolves, or Robin Hood, or any other movie he ever made. Did I need to see his pasty white cheeks? (No.)

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

Fuck.

[cpt kangarooski]

Don't get me wrong -- the Orphan Works and new 110 exemption are both good, if very half-assed.

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 /. article is a huge misnomer.

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

Re:Fuck.

[cpt kangarooski]

No.

The new 18 USC 2319B makes it an offense to, in pertinent part, knowingly use or attempt to use, a camera. Possession of one is a factor that can be looked at, but the statute actually says that mere possession of a camera isn't enough to support a conviction.

So if you bring one in, with the intent to use it, that's enough. But if you bring one in, and don't use or attempt to use it, that's not enough.

The trick is in how we determine your intent, if you get caught at an early stage. It's easy if you've set it up on a tripod, patched it into the sound system, and have your finger on the record button. It's harder earlier, but still possible.

Re:Wish these were rights I want, or could agree w

[GreyWolf3000]

I sympathize with you, but look on the bright side...

We can finally watch Episode 1 without Jar Jar in it!