Hollywood Says No to Filtering DVD Player

haplo21112 writes "There is a posting over at ZDNet about how Hollywood continues to trample on the American consumer's free use rights. They want to prevent the sale of a special DVD player which can be used to edit out offensive material from a DVD in realtime. While I don't agree with censorship in general, I do believe its everyone's right to do what they wish with their own media."

Re:Why Hollywood is Right

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not the same at all. The product--the art--the DVD--whatever--is unchanged. This isn't like selling an edited version of some famous book with all the naught bits edited out. This is analogous to selling special reading glasses that people can choose to wear when reading the same unaltered book as everyone else.

The DVD is not harmed in the process. The art is not altered one iota.

How is this different from a machine that closes people's eyes during bad scenes or mutes the volume automatically for bad words? Take the disc to a friend's house and it's pristine!

Who exactly is "Hollywood"?

[FurryFeet]

If you do a Google search for news on this device, you'll find out that the movie studios have nothing against it. In fact, they'd like to sell movies to parents that wouldn't buy before because of mature content.
The suit is being pursued by several directors who insist they have "moral rights" on their films. Now, from their perspective, the device is akin to someone covering the Venus of Milo's breast, or putting duct tape over Goya's Naked Maja. They claim the movie is art.
So, save the kneejerk reactions and start posting nice.
For the record, I disagree with the suit, and I think all the device does is automate what I can do myself anyway. I can fast forward boring/sexual/violent parts anyway and they can't do a damn thing about it, so I can't see the problem in making the process more efficient.

Eberts opinion.

[arak]

Scroll to the bottom of this [suntimes.com] article to read Roger Eberts opinion on this.

Illegal now, hopefully legal soon

[adaknight]

Check out this legislation [loc.gov] - an amendment to the DMCA that will allow exactly this sort of fair use under the law. I hope it passes.

This has nothing to do with users!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Did anyone here READ the article? The issue is not about users editing movies to suit their individual needs, it's about a company called ClearPlay who has already edited the movies for the user.

The DVD player contains information about thousands of hit movies. When you try to play one of those, it will edit the movie according to the standards that ClearPlay chose, NOT WHAT THE USER CHOSE!

Users may have the right to make derivative works for movies for non-monetary personal use, but ClearPlay doesn't unless it wants to pay copyright royalties.

Re:We need a simple scene scripting language...

[stienman]

Of course, I should have known that scriptable dvd players were already available from Microsoft and Apple:

Microsoft offers DVD playback control through Directshow and the MSWebDVD ActiveX Object [microsoft.com], which, among other methods, gives you the ability to start a playback session with defined start and end points down to the frame. This is likely the method Clearplay uses, so they don't have to pay for a DVD player license - they simply control the one that is registered with DirectX 8.

Apple's DVD player is scriptable to some extent with ActiveScript - a tutorial of the process [digitallyobsessed.com] is available. I didn't look closely enough to determine whether it could go to the frame or not...

I'm sure many linux players can be controlled while playing from the command line, which could easily be scripted, but I doubt current players allow for frame control, and it appears as though none of these methods provide interrupts for when the specified section is done - meaning that you'll be polling the current play time every frame so you don't miss a cut.

MSWebDVD looks like it'll be the first, easiest method of performing this function, and it would have the widest audience for acceptance. Once people get this function for free on their computers (given that others are willing to create the scripts) then people will be wondering why their home DVD player doesn't have that ability.

At that point, producers might actually start including the scripts on their DVDs like they were supposed to in the first place - Do you remember when DVDs were first being marketted? One major feature was that the company producing the DVD could put a menu item to automatically cut scenes from the movie for different ratings. Guess what never happened? DVD players can handle it - but no producer's willing to take the time and money.

It would fix the problem, though, if producers don't want people editing their movies, then they should provide the editings for us. Otherwise, we have no recourse, just as when we had no recourse for watching DVDs on alternative OS's.

-Adam

Re:what amazes me most...

[87C751]

I mean really are they next going to tell us that to use the fast forward, pause, and rewind buttons are a violation of the copyright

Too late... [2600.com]

Re:FBI warnings too?

[Sgs-Cruz]

The Apex DVD players let you flash the PROM to skip that kind of thing... I just did a quick google and most of the info is available...

Re:I would think Hollywood would profit from this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, (under UK and most european countries copyright laws) you *may not* deface a work of art simply because you buy the original. For example, if I were to buy Waterhouse's "Hylas and the Nymphs" (I wish...) I would actually be infringing the copyright by painting bikinis on the nymphs.

This is a common misconception- copyright does not just apply to duplication!