April 27, 2005

Protect All Legitimate DVD Users

It's not a bad idea to protect DVD filtering technology to allow parents to edit movies for their children. The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act empowers parents who feel they're barely treading water in the media ocean.

However, other DVD users besides parents protecting their children from excessive sex and violence could use some empowering. Right now, it's illegal to rip a DVD to play it on another device. Even though you own, say The Star Wars Trilogy, you cannot legally rip the movie to play it on a notebook computer without a DVD player, any other device, or to make a back up. Such use isn't piracy. It's just making media more flexible to better fit people's lives. In 2004, the entertainment industry gave up the fight over DeCss. But who's to say a new attack won't come in the future?

"Bush Signs Bill to Let Parents Filter DVDs"

UPDATE: John Cole sees the bill as Bush placating a certain set of companies. He seems to think Hollywood should have let the DVD filtering companies go ahead. Cole misses the point. Hollywood was the roadblock. Hollywood was being so strict with their copyright enforcement that the filtering companies were threatened. This law allows technology to be developed that allows parents to edit a DVD. It's federal government intervention but Cole has to explain how it's "unreasonable, big government."