H.R. 4586 The Family Movie Act - You're Gonna Get Busted

Have you ever rented a movie at Blockbuster, gotten home, realized it's late and decided to fast-forward through the previews?  Do you get annoyed with ads on your DVD's and skip them too?  Or, are you now, for the umpteenth time, watching another preview for that movie you saw three months ago, the one you hated? 

Well, it's uncaring, self-centered people like you who are ruining our economy and causing whole industries to crash, people to lose jobs, and children to go hungry.  You oughta be ashamed of yourself.  Well now, if some people have their way, this once great nation of ours won't have to put with the likes of you anymore, we're gonna send you to jail and let you rot for such heinous crimes.  You heard me - right.   A new bill is being proposed in congress that would make it illegal to fast forward through the ads and previews on DVD's.

Apparently, you can skip through objectionable parts of the movies themselves, but you can't skip through the commercials and previews.  Here's what the website Public Knowledge says about this bill.

H.R. 4586 The Family Movie Act

The provisions were included in H.R. 4077 as passed by the House. The original House version of this bill provided an affirmative right for those who used technology to skip objectionable material, such as profanity, violence, or other adult material, in the audio / video works that they legally purchased. This is a right that most believe manufacturers of technology and consumers already have—regardless of H.R. 4077. The entertainment community has hijacked this provision and turned it against consumers and the tech community. Now, the affirmative right to watch and skip parts of the content that a consumer has legally obtained only exists if certain conditions are met: no commercial or promotional ads may be skipped. Additionally, technology manufacturers must provide a notice at the beginning each showing stating that “the motion picture is altered from the performance intended by the director or copyright holder of the motion picture.” This sets the functionality of the everyday VCR and TiVo on its head.

According to Gigi Sohn, who is with Public Knowledge and fighting this bill:

"Their concern is if it becomes easy for people to skip ads, then their whole business model goes down the drain."

Aah, now I understand - Hollywood and it's partner industries make all of their money from people who watch the previews and ads at the beginning of DVD's.

Of course, if this is passed, you can look for laws that will ban you from going to the kitchen to pop popcorn during the previews, and from going to the bathroom during the ads.

Hat Tip: Serenity Journal

Comments

[Rong]

I wish Uncle Fester were around. He'd just grab his big ol'blunderbuss and waving it in the air shout, "where are they, I'm going to shoot them in the back!"

Yup, that's how we should handle em. Line these marketing bufoons up against a wall and shoot em in the back. Oh, and lets not forget their lawyers and anyone else that's idiotic enough to have gone along with this bill.

Whew, now I feel better! [steps down from soapbox]

[Zoomie]

"You heard me - right. A new bill is being proposed in congress that would make it illegal to fast forward through the ads and previews on DVD's."

From a closer reading of the provisions, what's being argued is the use of automated technology that does the "skipping" for you. No problem with sitting there, remote in hand, and exercising the traditional kind of parental control we always have.

Fast forward? You bet!

Skip the ads? Every chance I can!

Let a robot do it for me? Bzzzzt, thank you for playing! That's about to be illegal.

But, what's so bad about sitting there with your crumb-crunchers and participating in their entertainment-overloaded lives a little?

Cheers,

Zoomie

[Scott McClare]

How, exactly, is this law supposed to be enforced? Will there be a little camera installed opposite the TV to make sure people aren't shuttling through the annoying 10 minutes of previews Disney sees fit to put at the beginning of every movie?

When the movie industry gives away the tapes and DVDs for free, they can tell us how to view them. As long as I'm paying for the copy, I'll do with it as I please.

[Renee]

And these same folks complain about the Patriot Act... GEESH

[dopderbeck]

I hate the technology that prevents one from skipping ads on a DVD (and under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, such technology essentially already has the force of law -- it's a crime to circumvent it -- so the "commercial skipping" part of this bill is largely moot). But I'm not comfortable with the technology this bill is designed primarily to address -- the "scrubber" technology that mutes bad words in movies -- also is troubling. It's a matter of free speech and artistic integrity. If you don't want to watch a movie with bad words, don't rent the movie.

[Scott McClare]

George Lucas and his endless rewrites of Star Wars has arguably done more harm to the cause of "artistic integrity" than any little electronic scrubber.

It isn't a free-speech issue, since no one has stopped the filmmaker from saying what he pleased, nor have they prevented anyone who wants to from seeing the whole film in all its profane glory. Rather, it's about his (non-existent) right to be paid attention to. Specifically, as you've framed the issue, it's about the permissible level of self-censorship. The manufacturer of the scrubber says you should be able to bleep out the words that offend you; you say that if the words offend you, you should just bleep the whole movie.

But how would shutting him off completely HELP the cause of free speech?