Rather than edit copyrighted movies, ClearPlay's customers purchase a filter uniquely tailored to each movie that automatically skips sex and violence and mutes the bad language. But the original format of the movie is not altered in any way.

Herskovitz wasn't buying that, saying in a digital age a movie is an artistic creation made up of binary code. And ClearPlay is changing the binary code and, by definition, changing what the artist intended.

"In fact, every single film has to have been edited in their offices," he said. And ClearPlay's product "is a new program that is not the program I made."

Herskovitz and the rest of Hollywood can see the writing on the wall, and there is but muted opposition to the bill, in part because it does not allow unauthorized editing of the materials, only a technological filter that skips the objectionable material.

Cleanflicks' Lines is taking a different legal tact, arguing that once a customer buys a movie, it is theirs to do with what they want. And at Cleanflicks, the customer brings in the store-bought version and in return they receive the original back and an edited copy minus all the stuff the customer doesn't want.

And it is the customer who sets the standard of what is removed and what stays.

The industry maintains that is unauthorized duplication, and that it should be the studio that decides how a movie is edited, something that is done all the time when a movie airs on television or on an airplane.

Herskovitz finds those versions "despicable," but he understands it and is part of the process.

But what he is most concerned about is that the legislation will open a Pandora's box, one where customers could dictate to filtering or editing services that they wanted all scenes with black people or Jews removed, or those that show people smoking or drinking, or whatever they might find objectionable.

"It will be absolute chaos," he said.

But Hollywood, Smith said, has pushed the envelope too far, adding that 95 percent of parents want the technology to filter objectionable materials.

"People think Hollywood insults their family values," he said.

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E-mail: spang@desnews.com