It probably won’t affect the adult industry (Try imagining an adult film without the “good parts.” Just try.), but Hollywood is trying to determine what impact the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005 will have on a pending lawsuit against a handful of companies that produce “sanitized” copies of big-screen movies. President George W. Bush signed the act into law on Wednesday, privately and without comment, according to White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan.
Even before it was passed by the House of Representatives on April 19, the act was criticized as overly broad and at odds with existing copyright law. In addition to stiffening penalties for distributing prerelease movies and music on the Internet and criminalizing the use of camcorders to record movies in theaters, the act provides prison terms of up to three years for anyone caught with a digital copy of a prerelease film or music whether or not they have shared it or downloaded it online.
It also expressly legalizes the use of technologies that can sanitize films, or remove content some viewers find objectionable: sex scenes, violence, and foul language.
While the Motion Picture Association of America hailed the anti-piracy portions of the act as “strong advocacy for intellectual property rights,” individual directors, Hollywood studios, and others involved in the film and television industries decried the law as legalizing copyright violation for a small, fledgling industry that manufactures and distributes to consumers software filters for DVD players or edited copies of commercial DVDs. Hollywood executives argue that such companies – like Utah-based ClearPlay, one of the most prominent – should have to pay royalties for tampering with their creative efforts.
In 2004, the Directors Guild of America filed suit against several DVD-sanitizing firms on behalf of eight movie studios and director Steven Spielberg, claiming the copies of copyright-protected works created by ClearPlay and similar companies are no less unauthorized than those produced by pirates. Whether the lawsuit will be allowed to proceed – or whether the studios will challenge the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act itself – has not been determined.
