Wednesday, April 20, 2005
In mixed news, the House passed a bill authorizing technology makers to permit skipping of objectionable material on DVDs. For instance, a built-in filter on your DVD player would allow you to selectively edit nudity, swearing, violence, or other objectionable content. While I personally won’t use this technology, I firmly believe that users have the right to view DVDs on their own terms. I absolutely hate the fact that warnings, trailers, and outright commercials are shown on DVD now and I cannot skip them without breaking the copy protection.
The bad news to this bill is that now people that camcorder a movie in a theatre are eligible for up to 3 years in prison. Call me crazy, but if I was to actually physically steal a DVD from a store, I probably would not get that kinda time. Is this punishment commensurate with the crime? Have you actually seen what a camcordered theatre release looks like? That should be punishment enough. We already have laws for copyright protection, we don’t need more special case laws.