Well, this is an easy one to pass because it's just about people having the right to do what they want with something they bought. It doesn't impose on anyone else.

These systems don't even edit the underlying DVDs, and they can be turned on and off. Much better than selling bowlderized copies.

In other words, even those who normally hate censorship can like this bill. It strengthens the concept of free use and the idea that once you buy something, you can do what you want with it.

Note that the bill specifically doesn't protect selling edited movies, just people using devices to edit what they're watching themselves when they bought the original DVD.

Seems like a perfectly fair things.

I guess the Motion Pictures association should not have hired an ex-Clinton cabinet member to replace Valenti.

Mr. Thacker is 100% correct. As a strong opponent of censorship, I support this law. I don't see how this technology is really different than the fast forward and rewind buttons. Moreover, any law that increases personal choice while irritating the Hollywood elite is a good law.

Now if only they'd release the Jar-Jar filter that did so much to improve Episode 1.

i heard them talking about this, on npr yesterday (and hoped there would be an article here). it's clear the studios are unhappy that people with moral objections to their fare, now have more control. none of their objections were valid, and i waitied in vain for the npr guy to ask them how this was any different than what is done to show movies on tv.

It was a bait and switch. Hollywood got what they wanted in a rider, which was felony penalties of up to three years in prison for file-sharing a pre-release movie.

You already had the "right" to skip over objectionable material under fair use.

Protection of property rights/copyrights is quintessentially conservative.

Ted--

Perhaps we already did. I like to think we did. Fair use is hardly codified, though, if you've read the statutes. Unfortunately, our interpretation of fair use and the MPAA's (and the courts' at times) are often at odds.

I think I heard that a followon technology will allow the user to decide what to delete, not some businessman.

So you could eliminate all the wholesome stuff and just show the T&A.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. In our rooming house at Cow College, one of the boys flunked out and was drafted. He left us his Yamaha 100 and a crate of salacious books ('Rosy Crucifixtion,' 'Last Exit to Brooklyn' etc) with all the relevant passages underlined so you didn't have to read the boring parts.