From Deseret News archives:
Film filter companies hoping bill will pass
Before this week's recess, the U.S. House of Representatives approved and sent to the Senate the Piracy Deterrence and Education Act, including a section called the Family Movie Act, which would indemnify technologies that filter objectionable content out of movies during viewing without permanently altering them.
Salt Lake-based ClearPlay is a company that produces technology fitting that description. ClearPlay's technology embeds movie-specific filtering files into DVD players that instruct the player where to skip unwanted content or language.
The company is involved in a lawsuit with the Directors Guild of America and Motion Picture Association of America, which both say ClearPlay's technology infringes on copyright by altering a work without the knowledge or consent of the copyright holder. Utah-based movie-editing company CleanFlicks is a party in the lawsuit, as well.
ClearPlay Chief Executive Officer Bill Aho testified at a recent House judiciary subcommittee hearing on movie filtering technology.
"It seems to me that families should have the right to watch what they want in their home," Aho said in defense of the Family Movie Act. "If the studios can extend their copyright into the living room and the family experience, well, I guess they'd like to do that. We happen to think that the copyright law doesn't give them that kind of protection."
Jack Valenti, former CEO of the motion-picture association, testified before Congress as well, and though the MPAA supports the bill as a whole because it would curb piracy, it does not support the Family Movie Act section, preferring to resolve issues through licensing agreements.
In a statement, Valenti said that solution would involve "the studios, in consultation with the directors, creating 'airplane-like' versions of popular movies." Commercial editing services would then use those versions as templates to prepare their alternate versions, he said.
CleanFlicks President Allan Erb is not thrilled with that option.
"To put (the studios and directors) in a position where they control the editing, I think would be dangerous unless there were some safeguards or mechanisms in place to assure that we wouldn't just drift, as we have over the last 10 or 15 years, into a ever-increasingly lower and lower moral standard," Erb said.
The Family Movie Act won't solve any of CleanFlicks' legal battles, as it only applies to technologies that do not alter the original content of a film.
