Bush condones copyright infringement

What the hell were they thinking when they put his sorry ass back in power?

Ok, so the story goes that a company called ClearPlay came up with an electronic means (essentially prepared filters) that allow the removal of various objectionable material. This removal would include language, violence, and sexual content. What's wrong with this you ask? Well, it has to do with removing the artistic integrity of the film, released as the studios intended it to be (and you do not know how hard it is for me to side with those greedy bastards).

The studios, actors, directors, writers, producers, et al spend a lot of time and money to produce a film in a certain way to properly get across their respective vision. What this bill allows ClearPlay and like companies is to modifiy this vision in whatever way they feel. While I understand removing the naughty words for general TV viewing, I do not understand this height of laziness.

Let's just get someone to sit through the movie noting everything that they arbitrarily decide is naughty, sexy, bad, or immoral. Do you see where this is going? If you want to keep those things away from your family, then simply do not expose it to them. I cannot agree with modifying the content of the film to suit a single group's perception of what is good.

To be fair, ClearPlay's technology is an updateable filter that mutes the sound or skips parts of a film to "remove" the offensive material. So, in the true sense of the word, they leave the original material intact. There are other companies, however, that are remastering the films without this objectionable material. This is bloody nuts. If I do not know what the original looked like, how do I know things that I do not find objectionable were also not removed.

This is an interesting idea in a very suspect package. And the fact that Bush signed it so quickly tells me to beware of the tendrils going out form this. Remember, the DMCA was supposed to be a good thing too. Remember that when you lose your Lord of the Rings collection to some really potent cat pee and have to rpelace it by buying all the discs again. Without the DMCA, you would have been able to simply make a backup of your collection that gets normal use while locking up the originals in a safe spot (thanks Clinton).

So, let's see where this new bill ends up and how it affects te industry overall. One last thing, we also have filters in our home for objectionable content so that it does not reach our daughter. It's called "parenting". If more people used that filter, maybe North America would not be getting as ^(&%(*&^( up as it seems to be these days.

CANOE -- CNEWS - Tech News: U.S. bill allows parents to remove offensive material from movies