President Bush signed a bill into law (interestingly, with no public signing ceremony) that allows a specific software company to "edit" movies by skipping sections of a DVD that they deem to contain objectionable material. It is unquestionably a huge victory for one company, Clearplay, based it Utah (Thanks, Orrin!) that sells this add-on service to your DVD player at $5/month. The movie studios believe that a 3rd party has no right to edit/alter their copyrighted work without permission.
I don't understand why can't there be a free market solution to this problem that doesn't infringe on the copyright of the artist. Movies are willingly altered all the time, to be shown on airplanes and broadcast TV. Of course, if the producers choose not to do this, that should also be their right.
No doubt this will end up playing out in the courts. The Clearplay technology may technically not violate existing copyright statues, since it doesn't physically alter the media itself, but that's only because the law hasn't caught up. And it is true that the content owners don't lose any money, since the original product must be used. However, the copyrights protect more than income, it protects the rights of artistic presentation. I don't see how Clearplay can argue that their product has any purpose other than to alter the original work for their own profit. There is no "fair use" argument.
I also think it's bad politics to legislate the business model of one specific company. If this kind of thing becomes commonplace, the influence of money and political connections may just start to have an impact on what laws end up being passed. That could lead to a corrupting influence on our elected representatives.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment