Arguments between film directors and the studio executives overseeing their work are a legendary staple of Hollywood life. These disagreements have even spawned a genre of their own: the "director's cut."
Now the Congress of the United States, backed up by the President of the United States, has inaugurated a new era in the perennial battle of auteur/directors to maintain artistic and commercial control of their work product.
Section 202 of Title II of the
Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005, passed by the Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush on April 27, 2005, legally sanctions, in pertinent part:
"(11) the making imperceptible, by or at the direction of a member of a private household, of limited portions of audio or video content of a motion picture, during a performance in or transmitted to that household for private home viewing, from an authorized copy of the motion picture, or the creation or provision of a computer program or other technology that enables such making imperceptible and that is designed and marketed to be used, at the direction of a member of a private household, for such making imperceptible, if no fixed copy of the altered version of the motion picture is created by such computer program or other technology…. Any person who engages in the conduct described in paragraph (11) of section 110 of title 17, United States Code, and who complies with the requirements set forth in that paragraph is not liable on account of such conduct for a violation of any right under this Act."
This means that "ClearPlay filters" designed to expurgate video and audio content labeled by ClearPlay employees and selected by ClearPlay customers are now legal and that the
lawsuit previously filed against ClearPlay by Steven Spielberg and the Directors Guild of America may soon come to an end.
The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) is not happy about having the integrity of their art brutally attacked in this way. Pamm Fair, Deputy National Executive Director of SAG , spoke this afternoon with Etopia Media's
California Politics Today about the issues raised for actors by the use of the cyber-censorship technologies legalized by the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005 and implemented in ClearPlay and other, similar, content control systems.
You can listen to her comments on this subject, in their entirety, by clicking
here.
According to Ms. Fair, SAG has filed an
amicus curiae brief in support of the lawsuit being brought by Steven Spielberg and the Directors Guild of America (DGA) against the use of cyber-censorship technologies to interfere with the free expression of their work. You can read more about the DGA's position on this question by clicking
here.