Family Entertainment and Copyright Act

[AlecWest]

The bill clearly states, at least twice, that no permanent copy shall be made...

And of course, because the law says you can't do it, no one will try.

(extreme slippery slope mode with tongue in cheek)

[offline]

And of course, because the law says you can't do it, no one will try. redface.gif

Hear that? That is the sound of adam falling of his perch

[gadgetguy]

I, for one, never EVER suggested a direct link between government censorship and this law.

Fair enough, but the original article headline gave that impression. And only government censorship is to be feared and what we're protected from by the US Constitution.

[offline]

And only government censorship is to be feared

I feel that govt censorship is in the decline and that
we are facing a new era of corporate censorship
and manipulation by powerful private special interests.

However I see your point re: the orig article and
the strength of the US constitution.

[AlecWest]

And only government censorship is to be feared

I feel that govt censorship is in the decline and that
we are facing a new era of corporate censorship
and manipulation by powerful private special interests.

...who in turn will continue to exert influence on the government to become involved in the process.

This is less a political comment than historical ... but, if you believe in the pendulum theory of Karl Marx (which I do), the period of time we live in now makes perfect sense in light of the hedonism of the 1960s/1970s. But sooner or later, the pendulum will start to swing in the opposite direction.

A funny aside. About a year ago, I got "cut off" when I made a call to a conservative radio talk-show, hehe. There was some neocon guy on there doing a lot of chest-beating over the so-called Great Generation who fought World War II. He continued by blasting the lack of morality of the baby-boomer hippies ... and blaming "hippie lifestyles" for the current spate of youth crime, violence, and immorality. All I did was ask the guy two questions. First, "Do you believe baby-boomer parents should accept full responsibility for the current behavior of their children?" A resounding YES. Second question, "In that case, do you believe Great Generation parents should accept full responsibility for the immoral and hedonistic behavior of their children who adopted a hippie lifestyle?"

Click. Talk about the equivocation that followed, hehehe, including a poor attempt to lay blame on the "global communist conspiracy."

In any case, I think this is why many children get along better with their grandparents than with their parents. I think kids find a closer moral equivalency with their grandparents who have lived long enough to see the pendulum swing both ways. And being someone quickly approaching prime "grandparent" age, I'm beginning to wonder just how far back to the left that pendulum will swing.

And only government censorship is to be feared and what we're protected from by the US Constitution.

The Supreme Court doesn't "uphold" the Constitution, it "interprets" it. Get the right people onto the bench (and I do mean "right" in both senses of the word) and future interpretations may differ from past interpretations.

[offline]

Uh.. um

No political discussion please

seriously! no politics please or I'll have
to close this thread.

[ViRaL1]

I can't wait to start downloading the filters for all my favorite pr0n.

Opening Credits

Closing Credits
END

[adam]

I can't wait to start downloading the filters for all my favorite pr0n.

Opening Credits

Closing Credits
END

You might be interested in the DVD of Cabin Fever (gratuitiously gory horror flick). It has a Family safe version option in the special features. It plays the opening credits and then the closing credits. Whole DVD is a joke really.

[guns1inger]

Probably the best way to watch Cabin Fever, regardless of your age or beliefs.

[Nilfennasion]

In spite of the fact that the PG rated version of Freddy Got Fingered contained maybe 3% of the content of the R-rated version, I prefer it. Not because I have hang-ups about the R-rated content (I saw RoboCop when I was about ten years old if that's any clue), but because I am severely offended by Tom Green making light of child abuse. There are many fit subjects for comedies, but he just had to choose that one. The fact that it wasn't even very funny in spite of that doesn't help.

The PG version, on the other hand, is funny because it tells the same story without the superfluous crap. In spite of this, I would never tell someone they are not allowed to watch the R rated version. There's a bit of a story behind the reason. You see, a little while ago now, a stir was raised when the Australian government initially passed the French film Baise Moi with an R rating. The publicity the film generated when it was subsequently banned, however, ensured that a lot of copies were illegally imported from other countries. What happened after that was, put simply, a lot of people were disgusted because they were not warned about this contentless, meaningless drivel that the French dared to pass off as a film making an anti-porn statement. Instead, they were simply told they could not have it. Had it been cleared for theatrical release and left that way, you can bet it would have died a quick and nasty death at the box orifice.

Censorship gets in the way of the free market doling out whatever fate a creative project actually deserves.

[adam]

Censorship gets in the way of the free market doling out whatever fate a creative project actually deserves.

Yes, I think everyone's in agreement that censorship at the production or publishing levels is a bad thing, but these devices do nothing of the sort. Voluntarily blocking content of your own choosing isn't censorship. I fail to see how these devices will in any way effect the content of the films released or otherwise restrict the free market. On the contrary, criminalizing the manufacture or use of these machines would be a direct restriction on the free market.

BTW: I'm not necessarily saying you are calling this censorship. I honestly can't tell what you are saying, but it just seems that complaining about censorship doesn't get anyone in this thread anywhere.

[Nilfennasion]

I think it depends a lot on how you define censorship.

Censorship is used by governments in many a country to control the kind of ideas that get into people's heads. Try and picture films like Repo Man or Eat The Rich getting into countries like China for the public to watch in their unexpurgiated form, and you'll see what I mean. When you have a twelve year old boy who thinks that Natural Born Killers was all about these two teens who went around shooting people and nothing but, that's an example of censorship going too far. Or to put it the way Stephen King put it, the whole is always greater than the sum of the parts. Being a creative artist struggling for a break myself, my artistic principles say to me that if a consumer doesn't want to read my work in its entirety because they cannot handle the idea of a scene describing in a certain moderate level of detail the before, during, and after of the conception of heirs to an ancient Kingdom, then I have no interest in taking their cash from them. Any artist who says otherwise is, at least as far as I am concerned, not an artist. I think you'll hear a lot of directors, writers, actors, or the like expressing similar sentiments regarding such devices.

To cut a long story short, if the artist offers something you like or want, then buy it. If not, then don't. Buying something and then asking someone else to trim it down to one's tender sensibilities, or being able to do so, is probably going to turn out to be every creative artist's nightmare.

[kennyg]

I think it depends a lot on how you define censorship.

Censorship is used by governments in many a country to control the kind of ideas that get into people's heads. Try and picture films like Repo Man or Eat The Rich getting into countries like China for the public to watch in their unexpurgiated form, and you'll see what I mean. When you have a twelve year old boy who thinks that Natural Born Killers was all about these two teens who went around shooting people and nothing but, that's an example of censorship going too far. Or to put it the way Stephen King put it, the whole is always greater than the sum of the parts. Being a creative artist struggling for a break myself, my artistic principles say to me that if a consumer doesn't want to read my work in its entirety because they cannot handle the idea of a scene describing in a certain moderate level of detail the before, during, and after of the conception of heirs to an ancient Kingdom, then I have no interest in taking their cash from them. Any artist who says otherwise is, at least as far as I am concerned, not an artist. I think you'll hear a lot of directors, writers, actors, or the like expressing similar sentiments regarding such devices.

To cut a long story short, if the artist offers something you like or want, then buy it. If not, then don't. Buying something and then asking someone else to trim it down to one's tender sensibilities, or being able to do so, is probably going to turn out to be every creative artist's nightmare.

AMEN

[adam]

I'm glad kennyg likes it, but that is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

First off you just did it again. You talk about how censorship is bad, and then conclude that these devices are bad too...yet you neglected to actually show the connection.

Once again this is not government censorship because it is entirely self imposed and entirely avoidable. Arguing that people cannot cater goods to their needs simply because they are of artistic value defies the first sale doctrine which is accepted in all countries which apply copyright law. And where do you draw the line anyway? It takes an artist to make a table or a chair too. Or what about the designs on paper napkins? Those are copyrighted too ya know. How do we know how the artist intends these to be used, and why should we care? Once we buy it, it is ours. Regardless of your personal beliefs, artists do not have the right to do what you say and there's no reason they should have that right.

You just said that you would prefer a censored version of Freddy Got Fingered. If you buy that movie you have the right to only watch the scenes you enjoy and skip those that you find offensive. To suggest that the copyright holder has the right to force you to watch it all, or not at all, is much closer to a form of censorhip than what these ClearPlay devices do. Choosing, YOURSELF, to skip sections of a movie is no different than choosing to not watch the movie at all, and neither is anything close to censorship.

[mjliteman]

This talking in circles is really killing me!

@Adam,
Kudos to you, man, for really trying. I mean honestly. I don't know how it can be explained any more clearly than you've already (many, many times) explained it. For whatever reason, they just aren't getting it. I think several posters' minds are on a slippery slope.

MJ

[Nilfennasion]

I'm actually trying to explain it in the terms that are used to justify Region Coding, for one thing. But my logic behind the FGF thing was simple: the PG version featured as an extra on that disc amused me because it was offered as a joke by the filmmakers. To deflate the idea of the mandated censorship that is ruining Hollywood as a creative force.

A good example of when this everything must be suitable for four year olds mentality ruins everything would be the last Resident Evil film. If that is the MPAA's idea of an earned R rating, then I am truly afraid for the future of horror and action films. It was rated M here, and it is not even a hardcore M at that.

I've been skating around saying this, but what devices like Clearplay do a lot of the time is create false expectations of what specific ratings will entail. If a thousand parents expect the R-rated films to have no people chopping each other up, that's not so bad. But what happens when a few million who have been sanitised by Clearplay expect R rated films to have the same content as PG films?

It's all about market pressure. Go to websites like CAPalert, and you'll be smacked in the face with people who expect the MPAA to babysit their children. How much worse do you think it will get if they have an electronic device to do that for them? It wasn't so long ago that the MPAA would rate a film R just because one character called another a sucker. Do we really want to go back to that?

[AlecWest]

This talking in circles is really killing me!

@Adam,
Kudos to you, man, for really trying. I mean honestly. I don't know how it can be explained any more clearly than you've already (many, many times) explained it. For whatever reason, they just aren't getting it.

Yes, Adam did a superlative job of explaining the law. And yes, it only has to do with ClearPlay. People are "getting it," as you say. BUT...

I think several posters' minds are on a slippery slope.

I disagree. The problem here is that discussing the law is "fair game" ... but discussing the slippery slope is "political" and/or "religious" and cannot be fully done without getting the topic closed by a mod:

No political discussion please.

seriously! no politics please or I'll have
to close this thread.

That doesn't mean our minds are on a slippery slope ... just that our mouths are in a straightjacket. 8)

[JimG30303]

I have a different opinion. I think this new law is a good thing. It protects companies that sell devices so that parents can let their children watch original, R-rated movies without seeing the objectionable stuff. (See www.clearplay.com) The technology doesn't change the original DVD and the original DVD can still be played without the filtering if you want - and most people that are opposed to it don't understand it well enough to be expressing an opinion.

There's nothing wrong with this technology but the movie producers and directors objected because the consumer could view "their" movie in a way that was not 100% the way they shot it! What a load of crap! They were filing lawsuit to try to stop this. In my view, the industry got it wrong. This technology results in more DVD sales. I've bought some R-rated movies that I'd never have bought without the technology. And - the technology does not work with DVD-R copies of the movies.

The argument of the industry, taken to its logical conclusion, would mean that the directors think they have the right to sue me if, during a movie, I close my eyes or plug my ears during a scene I don't like - because, by doing that, I'd "miss" seeing/hearing it they way they shot it.

[AlecWest]

I have a different opinion. I think this new law is a good thing. It protects companies that sell devices so that parents can let their children watch original, R-rated movies without seeing the objectionable stuff.

Well, that's not really a "different" opinion from mine. The law, as it is, is a good law. The only thing I'm afraid of is that morality watchdogs will be emboldened by it and later attempt to take things to a different level of censorship.

Nowadays, a lot of people edit a lot of stuff (with the computer technology available to do so). Back in my VCD days, I backed up my VHS tapes of Star Trek II, III, and IV in such a way that it was one continuous movie (putting all ending credits at the end of the last film). Now that I'm burning DVDs, I might do the same thing again since III picks up where II left off and IV picks up where III left off ... making it essentially the same movie in three parts. And, I did the same thing with my VHS tapes of Karate Kid I, II, and III. And, if people want to use a tool to edit out content they find objectionable, that's fine, too ... and this is all the new law allows.

But, I'm a big believer in slippery slopes when it comes to "zealots" ... and I don't just mean moral zealots. A few years ago, anti-smoking activists tried to pass a law in my state making it illegal to smoke in ALL places of business ... meaning that an architect working out of his home (a place of business under the law's definition) couldn't smoke in his own home without being a lawbreaker. And now, the same crowd who gave my state one of the highest cigarette taxes in the nation has turned its attention to increasing the tax on beer.

There is some truth to the old axiom, "Give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile." Hopefully, someone will tell the morality watchdogs that this new ClearPlay legislation also means, "this far and no further."

[Nilfennasion]

Hopefully, someone will tell the morality watchdogs that this new ClearPlay legislation also means, "this far and no further."

Thank you. You've put it exactly the way I was thinking it. After the savagery that the MPAA continues to perpetrate upon films of a vaguely adult nature, such a statement would be a wonderful thing to make.