Hollywood Says No to Filtering DVD Player 648
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."
I would think Hollywood would profit from this. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that I am agreeing with the censorship, I just don't see the logic in trying to ban this.
Money (Score:5, Insightful)
Go Hollywood! (Score:5, Insightful)
To play devil's advocate, (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I would think Hollywood would profit from this. (Score:5, Insightful)
Author is missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm guessing that the studios aren't so much interested in forcing people to watch "offensive scenes" as they are in ensuring that they are going to be the sole avenue for producing "Family" or "Edited" versions. A Studio might, for example, decide to release a PG-13 version of James Cameron's Aliens. There would probably be a market for that unless, of course, ClearPlay, CleanFlicks or some other company is already providing families with the ability to edit their R-rated Aliens DVD on the fly.
The author of the article would have a stronger argument if he wasn't distorting the true intentions of the studios like that.
GMD
It's Not Censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
This position is similar to a position that says "You are required to watch our films." It's not censorship, since it doesn't forbid some things from being shown, but it is absurd and outrageous.
Definition of "censorship" (Score:5, Insightful)
We need to be very careful about throwing around the word "censorship" in a context like this. IMO, it is not censorship or anything like it for a parent to fast-forward through a questionable scene in a movie. It's not censorship for a commercial organization to decide it doesn't want to carry/show/broadcast certain material.
Censorship is state-sponsored, implicitly-at-gunpoint, restrictions on free speech, freedom of the press, etc. It's prohibited by the Bill of Rights .
I would love to use this tech. (Score:5, Insightful)
With a technology like this, you could tell the DVD player what's appropriate for the audience.
It would be a really great solution to show certain movies in schools too.
Forcing you to what? (Score:4, Insightful)
I love the part in the article linked to [usatoday.com] where the ClearPlay CEO talks about watching movies with his kids and being uncomfortable with the language. Excuse me? You're watching R-rated movies with your kids and you all are uncomfortable with the language? Here's a tip: watch G-rated movies. That's what the rating system is for. Here's another tip: don't let your kids watch anything but G-rated movies if you don't want them hearing bad language. It works in my household.
Then there's the part in the ZDNet article about "Hollywood shouldn't force its paying customers to watch those scenes." Excuse me? Last time I checked, Hollywood has not forced me to watch anything. If you don't like nudity and violence in your movies, don't watch R-rated movies. It's simple.
To the real issue, though, it seems that there is no difference between CleanFlix and ClearPlay. Both want to profit by creating derivative works of copyrighted material. ClearPlay isn't some magical filter that automatically detects bad language and lots of flesh. It is a subscription service that will filter out movies that they have "edited". Same thing, different approach. Expect Hollywood to smack them down.
Use the rating system folks. It's your friend.
It's not censorship... (Score:5, Insightful)
If I set my
If I fast forward through commercials on a taped broadcast, that my choice -- not censorship.
If I want to use a DVD player that imports an edit list that filters out the naughty bits, that' my choice -- not censorship.
WHAT!? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not 'your own media' dude.
When you download Linux, you DO NOT OWN IT. Copyrights are ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. You only have rights to it, as granted by the owner of the material, and this is how it should be.
I'll give you a wonderful example. Brigham Young University decided to show Schindler's List to the students. Except, they wanted to show their own version, with all the "offensive content" removed. Speilberg said "no way", and he was fully within his rights to do so.
If copyright owners are not allowed to control what happens to their work, we could not enfoce the GPL. Free software would die.
How about the artists rights - not just consumers? (Score:2, Insightful)
I think when a director releases a film, it's their 'work of art' (whether or not it's a good film) and should be left in tact. They choose the scenes, the camera shots, and yes maybe the gratitious sex, violence, etc. - but their intention is for you to see it the way they, and the studio choose to. And if they choose to do a "Director's Cut" later and add/edit content - that's their choice, as it was their project, they own the rights, NOT the consumers.
If you don't like 'x' content, then your freedom of choice is to NOT watch the bloody nothing, not to edit or create your own version. You don't like what's out there, then go to film school and learn to make your own movies, but leave another artist's work alone.
Go ahead, flame away, but I think everybody likes to scream and rant about 'my rights', 'me me me!" and forget others have rights and protections as well.
Re:I would think Hollywood would profit from this. (Score:2, Insightful)
Filtering advertisements could be next (Score:4, Insightful)
Ummm.... (Score:2, Insightful)
So what do you have to say about Network Television editing movies for Broadcast Television. Why hasn't there been such a huge outcry?
Ted
Re:I would think Hollywood would profit from this. (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Their cut. I am sure these services that offer the filtering are not doing it for free (correct me if i am wrong), but if hollywood is loosing a potential revenue stream form this, I can see them being angry.
2. Directors. If I was a director, I would be pretty upset with 3rd party disruption of my vision of a movie even if it doesn't fit one's approriate maturity level. The "If you can't handle it don't watch it" rule applies here, which I can totally empithize with. Refer to the Simpsons episode on censoring museums.
3. Loss of control. With DVD's, the idea was to make a medium that could not have been tampered with. That obviously failed. With the reintegrated fight between content owners and content creators, we can see similar war in the horizon. This may just be a reinforcing leagl position to assist future problems.
EG. If I set my DVD player to 'NO_ADS' mode, effectively removeing the crap at the beginning of DVD's which I don't want to see, do I have the right to time shift through it if I deam that I don't want to look at it?
Personally, I think if i bought the DVD, and it does not effect anything outside the scope of what I purchased, I should be able to time shift and 'manipulate' the output of the movie any way like as long as it is legal to do so (no redistribution, etc...).
If I watch the movie from a projector steatching out the picture to look funky, and changing the sound channels, back to front and front to back, I should have the right to as long I am not infringing on the rights of the creators, which I wouldn't be, even though I am viewing a movie in a way not intended by the authors.
Re:Artistic Freedom or Copyright? (Score:2, Insightful)
The analogy here to what ClearPlay is doing, I guess, would be someone who puts up a website that says "Chapters a,b,c are about WWII, chapters x,y,z are about the data haven." It's absurd to think that the publisher could force such a website to be taken down.
Re:what amazes me most... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Forcing you to what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Artistic integrity is a smoke screen - while I believe it's certainly possible that some directors are pedantic enough to feel this affects them in some way (you wouldn't believe how silly some of the ones I've worked with got), they need a good smacking. Your creative control ended the moment I gave you (indirectly) money for my DVD. If that bothers you, don't sell your movie and insist on private screenings in controlled theatres
Re:WHAT!? (Score:4, Insightful)
This, however, is not about that. There is no copying or distribution - the DVD player simply plays the movie, which is legally obtained, a little differently. In theory, it is no different then fast forwarding past the parts that are considered harmful (or maybe even closing your eyes) - do you think Hollywood should have the right to tell us that is illegal?
This is not copyright law as it was intended. This is yet another step in the media industry's battle to turn copyright from "I own the right to duplicate this information" to "I own YOU whenever you are in contact with this information". It is quite horrible that there are people like you who actually seem to support the latter definition.
Re:Art or free media? (Score:3, Insightful)
In the case you're stating, the Church was preventing people from seeing the original artwork---even if they wanted to, and were fully aware of its supposedly "naughty" bits. In this case, there is no such force involved. Nobody is preventing anyone from seeing the unedited version. In fact, this DVD player can in all likelihood play both the edited and unedited versions!
This is about enabling choice, not restricting it. Just like I can buy the director's cut of Apocalypse now, now it would seem I can buy the preacher's cut as well
I disagree... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I would think Hollywood would profit from this. (Score:3, Insightful)
Political censorship (ie. limiting free speech via any method) is NOT the same as a parent deciding what a child can and cannot watch.
Personally I think the whole thing is a bit hypocritical anyway. Parents like this piss me off, particularly the types that go out and buy the Titanic video, and make a copy, cutting out the bits where they have sex in the car and you see Kate Winslet's tit and everything, yet they keep all the lying, cheating and violence in.
Things like this only serve to mystify these topics to children, and as we all know, whatever is taboo, is more interesting.
Things like this probably have their place, but just because a parent can click the 'Hide the nudie bits' button, doesnt mean they should stop caring what the children watch. We're already letting these soulless media companies raise our children, one step at a time, this just looks to me like another way for the parents to not give a shit about their children.
Re:Why Hollywood is Right (Score:5, Insightful)
If I don't have the right to filter a movie as I play it back, then perhaps I also don't have the right to watch it on a dusty screen in bad lighting, or on a screen of the wrong aspect ratio that adds black bars. Perhaps I don't have the right to wear sunglasses when looking at a painting. (Even blinking might be bad.) Perhaps I don't have the right to listen to music on crappy speakers, or lossy-compress it, or sing along with it. (If you've ever heard me sing, you know that "Screaming For Vengeance" sounds a lot better when I'm not around.)
Perhaps I don't have right to view a web page without the ads, or to have my browser override a stylesheet. Perhaps I don't have the right to view a web page unless I agree to download and install whatever plugins it wants so that I can experience the page as fully intended.
I think there's some point, within the my personal domain, where all the artist's rights end. At that point, everything that comes in becomes mine to lightly process or heavily mutilate, however I please. It would probably be foolish of me to butcher the works, but that's my decision to make. I cannot harm the artist; I can only harm myself.
Corporate fair use of someone else's work?!? (Score:4, Insightful)
I would make a distinction between the individual's right to modify in any way works they have purchased, without redistributing them, and the right of a corporation to make big bucks selling a machine that has its sole utility in hacking apart other people's art. I have no problem with a machine that edits and replaces parts of the film with the consent and instruction of the artists, but selling unauthorized modifications to someone else's work is clearly not fair use: this is no different from a third party selling DVDs of modified scenes from the original work, it just includes a handy machine to also hack those scenes into the original DVD for you.
Of course, these objections are pure hypocrisy coming from the same media giants that speed up movies and squish the credits down to a quater of your screen, if they show them at all, but that's a separate issue.
Re:I would think Hollywood would profit from this. (Score:1, Insightful)
Product Placement is at stake. (Score:2, Insightful)
Computers make it easy to add color or Coke. Or to delete color or Coke.
Make no mistake about it, Hollywood only cares about Money (thus it cares about ads whole or part screen), not bare breasts.
Re:WHAT!? (Score:3, Insightful)
Bzzt. It's yours if you bought it. The copyright owner no more has the right to stop you from not watching the naughty bits than he does preventing you going to take a leak during the mushy scenes in Top Gun.
Yes you do. If you want to recompile it so that the TTY outputs in Klingon, no one has the right to tell you not to. If you want to not compile in support for an Appletalk network, you don't have to (even if the standard build you grabbed has it). Likewise, if you buy a copy of the statue of David and want to slap a pair of Levi's on the poor guy - hey, it's your statue.
Perhaps they didn't have the right to broadcast, or to render it for public showing. But if you wanted to buy a copy, and then watch it in fast forward while standing on your head drinking a Pepsi, that's again your right.
Re:I am on Hollywoods Side (Score:3, Insightful)
This will be great (Score:2, Insightful)
Right?
Re:I would love to use this tech. (Score:2, Insightful)
So don't watch the movie then. My God, since when did we give up the right to choose for the right to insist?
What next? "I want to read 'Crime and punishment', but I insist that it be presented to me as a light-hearted, romantic comedy"?
Re:Money (Score:5, Insightful)
Does ANYONE watch the advertisements on the DVD anymore? Everyone I know uses the time to mute the tv and finish making popcorn and stuff. They don't even look at the tv.
Hey I don't have a problem with forced advertising if the movie was FREE. But it isn't!
What a world where we pay to watch advertisements. Often, even the movies themselves are advertisements for a political purpose.
--jeff++
Re:Why Hollywood is Right (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not a right, it is a WISH.
Re:Why Hollywood is Right (Score:1, Insightful)
Copyright isn't about artistic integrity, but only to "promote the progress of science and useful arts." Artistic integrity? The law specific permits parody for cryin' out loud. Heck, the original 1790 copyright act didn't cover derivative works at all.
By the way, copyright is what allows one company to buy the rights to a classic movie, colorize it, and prevent anyone else from showing the original.
Re:what amazes me most... (Score:3, Insightful)
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, and if we want to get up and go to the bathroom, or make popcorn, we have to miss the movie just like they intended us to do in the movie theater.
Well it is quite obvious that all of the Executives have Au Pairs to watch their kids for them while they are off busy at fancy Hollywood parties. They handle the copyright violations by having a person fastforward through the bad bits for their kids.
Re:I would think Hollywood would profit from this. (Score:5, Insightful)
Buying a Monet is not the same as buying a movie on DVD. Buying a print would be the same. I still agree with your sentiment, that you should be able to do with it whatever you feel like. The media companies don't agree though. For them buying a DVD is not the same as buying a print. According to them all you get is permission to access their content in whatever way they deem acceptable. Not ownership.
Re:I would think Hollywood would profit from this. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I would think Hollywood would profit from this. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a really poor analogy. Roads are public, and changing the speed limit effects everyone. This is like saying you can't paint your own car, even if you never take it out of the driveway.
"Directors. If I was a director, I would be pretty upset with 3rd party disruption of my vision of a movie"
They have every right to get upset, they don't have a right to stop it. I'm sure certain directors would be upset if they knew I watched their movies drunk off my ass and made fun of them the whole time. Should it therefore be illegal for me to do so?
Re:I would think Hollywood would profit from this. (Score:5, Insightful)
When the whole "DVD thing" was brand new... (Score:2, Insightful)
hypocrites (Score:3, Insightful)
I could almost agree with this, if only these bastard hypoccrites would stick to this principle when the same movie is shown on TV. There they are quite satisfied to let the networks chop the movie to hell, removing not only critical to the story parts, but also things a lot more tame than things that were shown on "Three's Company" decades ago. (I still remember with disgust that CBS cut two Teri Garr lines from Young Frankenstien - "Thank You" and "Here?, Now?" . The studios let them and likely outright helped them.) If a movie can be censored based on some network idiot's whim and then broadcast to others, then you certainly should have the right to censor your own copy in the privacy of your own home.
Re:Here's two ideas. Ok. More than that. (Score:2, Insightful)
How come minister's daughters always make the best strippers?
Yes, my post is flamebait-ish, but I think that the issues I raise are good ones.
Why not wait for the TV version?
Buy movies that are rated appropriately.
Give your child an appreciation of books and they will thank you forever.
How does one explain the use of profanity, ect., when it is taboo?
Good questions, marred by a broken /., obscured by egregious profanity, and hidden by incorrect moderation.
Re:How about the artists rights - not just consume (Score:2, Insightful)
Skipping certain scenes or muting certain words of a movie is just like ripping pages out of a book or blackening over selected words with a magic marker. No copies are being made or distributed, so copyright law does not prevent the purchasers of the books or movies from deleting any content as they desire. Doesn't matter what you want. Copyright law does not grant infinite control.
Hollywood may regret this (Score:2, Insightful)
Censorship and Fair Use (Score:4, Insightful)
If I own a DVD, it's well within my rights if I don't want to see it all the way through, mute some parts, hear some parts in a provided alternate language track, watch it backwards, or skip over parts I don't want to see. Consider: if I feel that the best way to experience looking at a painting I own is to look at it standing on my head, no one has any right to criticize. You may think me silly, but you can't say I can't do that, even if you painted it.
Censorship implies that there is a third party (such as the government) interceding and preventing the original art from being shown. In the case of the Brigham Young University viewing of Schindler's List, it is censorship because it wasn't a private viewing by a home video owner, but a public showing, and BYU wanted to censor what it considered offensive. That is a case where the artist has a right to prevent a showing.
On-the-fly editing is not censorship. If I choose to see the film in such a manner as I see fit, the director has no right to say I can't, because I'm not imposing my view onto others, like BYU was by wanting to show a film deviating from the artist's vision.
By extension, I think ClearPlay is perfectly legal. ClearPlay is not distributing any version of the film, it is providing a method of playing studio-made DVDs while editing on the fly. The viewer and owner of the disc needs to agree that she wants to see the film in the way proscribed by ClearPlay (by paying the service fee ClearPlay charges), and therefore I consider it legitimate.
For what it's worth, I wouldn't pay a monthly fee for access to editing filters I can't save or edit myself. I WOULD buy a player or playing software that would allow me to impose my own filter.
Re:I would think Hollywood would profit from this. (Score:2, Insightful)
Heh...they always seem to forget that violence and profanity existed way before most people could read. Are we forgetting the crusades, the inqusition and a host of other wars?
Re:I would think Hollywood would profit from this. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:maybe we will learn how to live without them (Score:3, Insightful)
Imagine making Fight Club, then having someone remove the language, sex, and violence from it.
Re:Here's two ideas. Ok. More than that. (Score:3, Insightful)
But some things come down to, "Humm, Good Idea". And letting people filter, or modify the content they already paid for seems good to me. I do know some PG13 movies, might have a couple minutes that I dont want my 6yo to watch, so it could come in handy. But more likely, I will just watch movies after they goto bed. Biggest thing I want filtering for, is to get rid of the commericals on Disney movies. First 10 minutes are nothing but damn previews and soft drink commericals. At least 8x FF takes care of it quickly. (For now)
BTW, whats the minister daughters name?
Re:maybe we will learn how to live without them (Score:5, Insightful)
You have no idea if it's my first, or fifteenth time watching a movie. Maybe I want to skip to a certain scene to see a specific actor, or show a friend something. Maybe I want to come in where I left off the week before. Maybe I'm simply smarter than you and your hideous mangling of a movie makes it painful for me to watch some parts that you think are high art. Or, maybe, like the people developing the player, I have decided for my own reasons that I don't like some parts of the movie and I want to watch *my* movie in the way that I want.
Once you sell something it becomes the property of the purchaser. The only thing copyright prevents is their making copies. You sell all control over everything else when you sell the work. If you insist people watch it your way, don't sell it, play it in carefully controlled environments.
Re:what amazes me most... (Score:3, Insightful)
Copyright law is same for books, art, movies,music (Score:2, Insightful)
Certainly the courts would not rule as illegal any of the following acts:
NONE of these acts are any different from programming a DVD player to skip offensive portions of a movie you've purchased!
Either these acts are all illegal or the aren't. It's as simple as that! DVD's don't deserve special treatment.
If the courts rule in favor of Hollywood on this one, it will set a dangerous precendent...
Re:Go Hollywood! "Piglet's mangled corpse" ?! (Score:3, Insightful)
Jesus, with a sig like that this guy is complaining about "gory violence" in movies!
Re:I would think Hollywood would profit from this. (Score:3, Insightful)
But I have the right to obey the law instead and tell them to screw themselves.
The copyright holder has copyrights to what I purchase. But those rights are limited.
I cannot make copies of a book and sell it to the public. That would infringe copyright.
But if I buy a book I can rip out whatever pages I want. I can even sell the book again, as long as I do not misrepresent what I'm selling or commit other fraud. No matter what the licensing of the book says.
And in my country at least, I can even make copies of the book for my private use.
Don't buy their propaganda. Too many people have.
Re:I would think Hollywood would profit from this. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's like school text books. They are copyrighted works and those companies defend them since those books are big ticket tiems. However students can and do alter them all the time, by highlighting or underlining things they find interesteing, or by making notes. They also resell them, sometimes to other students, sometimes to the school bookstore. This is all perfectly legal.
Being the copyright holder doesn't give you a magic wand that lets you control everything that is ever done with your work. It lets you decide who is allowed to make copies of it, that's all.
And one other thing (Score:3, Insightful)
You are free to produce and sell movies. That does not compel people to watch them as you intended. You may intend for a person to see your movie on a large screen with a DD 5.1 sound mix, watched start to finish with no interruptions. If you release it on DVD, people are perfectly free to buy that DVD, watch it on a shitty TV with 2-track sound, decide it sucsk, fastforward through it looking for nudiy, and then rip it out and skeet shoot it (throw it in the air and shoot it with a shotgun). This certianly is not what you want them to see, but it isn't your right to dictate that.
A person can stand in a park and preach all day long, but they can't force you to allow them into your home so they can preach to you all the time.
define censorship (Score:2, Insightful)