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A few weeks ago, my TiVo beckoned me to watch Bleep! Censoring Hollywood, an ABC News-produced documentary on AMC. Bleep! was my first look at the "sanitizer" industry — mostly Mormon folk who have decided that it is their God-given right to edit Hollywood fare according to their own standards. They have launched companies like CleanFlicks and FamilyFlix, which edit films on VHS and DVD and sell these butchered copies in 100 outlets nationwide. Copyright be damned. As you might imagine, auteurs like Steven Soderbergh and Sydney Pollack find this morally repugnant, as well as a legal infringement of their artistic rights.
From foreplay to snuff in five seconds flat.
Later that day, I read that President Bush had signed The Family Entertainment & Copyright Act into law. Provoked by MPAA lobbying, the act makes it a federal crime (punishable by fines and prison terms of up to three years) to distribute even one copy of a pre-release Hollywood film via P2P. But it was the eleventh-hour attachment of the Family Movie Act, however, that gave me brain freeze: it carves a copyright exemption for the sanitizers.
Introduced by Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, (himself once pro-Napster and on the record as wanting to "keep the pipes open"), the amendment benefits one company, ClearPlay — from the Senator's home state, no less — which sells a DVD player with filtering technology created by Nissan, Inc. During floor debate over the bill, Congressman Berman (the Democratic liaison to the entertainment industry who lobbied on behalf of the MPAA for such draconian measures against piracy) pointed out that ClearPlay is being sued in Colorado for patent infringement of Nissan, Inc.'s technology.
Apparently, Nissan designed the technology not to restrict viewing, but to enhance it: While Clearplay has fourteen filter settings, which cut out "vain references to deity," "gory/brutal violence," and "explicit sexual situations," Nissan technology can enable a viewer to intensify their experience and, said Berman, "play a version of an adult video that seamlessly excludes content inconsistent with the viewer's adult content preferences, […] presented at a level of explicitness preferred by the adult. Adult content categories are standardized and are organized into five groups: who, what, camera, position, and fetish." Whoa! From foreplay to snuff in five seconds flat.
But it's not just a matter of making R movies PG. As David Pogue pointed out in his New York Times Circuits column last year, ClearPlay "filters could be based on social, political, and professional prejudices." By carving out this copyright set-aside, the historical record can be altered, whether we're speaking of the violence in Saving Private Ryan, the Anti-Bush rhetoric of Fahrenheit 9/11, or the euthanasia denouement of Million Dollar Baby. In fact, it's already been done. In The Hurricane, the life story of boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, ClearPlay edits out the racial conflict that is the basis of his biography. When white police officers taunt Carter, ClearPlay completely skips the slurs, eliminating the context for the racism he feels at the hands of law enforcement. Beyond the fury of director Norman Jewison and actor Denzel Washington, what would Hurricane himself make of this excision?
It is unclear how the industry as a whole plans to proceed. A Director's Guild statement admonishes: "amending the copyright law […] would allow companies to destroy someone else's property rights and reputation, all in the name of profit. This is particularly troubling in a digital era, where creative works can so easily be destroyed or distorted by others." But as of now, it hasn't yet formulated a legal strategy.
Steven Soderbergh appears to be proactive. Within twenty-four hours of FECA's passage, he announced a six-picture deal with Mark Cuban's 2929 Entertainment and the release of his upcoming film Bubble on three simultaneous platforms — theaters, hi-definition cable and DVD. Soderbergh will create his version of "family-friendly" content depending on the medium/rating/audience,
effectively disabling sanitizer access to distribution and supply chains.
Technology will make artists of us all, enabling us to reimagine the external world.
When Orrin Hatch introduced The Family Entertainment & Copyright Act in the first session of the 109th Congress, the text began: "A bill to provide for the protection of intellectual property rights." Hatch's disingenuity is breathtaking. On the one hand, FECA is reactionary — ignoring the inevitability of digital distribution and file sharing, supposedly in support of artist copyright. In the same breath, it flouts intellectual property and undermines copyright law. It willfully sidesteps the near future, wherein technology will make artists of us all, enabling us to re-imagine the external world. On the one hand, that's exciting in ways the courts cannot fathom. By leaving Kelly McGillis and Meg Ryan on the virtual cutting room floor, Top Gun becomes a gay romance between Maverick and Iceman. But on the malevolent side of the continuum, cautionary tales like Schindler's List can become propaganda for Holocaust deniers.
Already the sanitizers who were not explicitly empowered by the new legislation are emboldened. Said Ray Lines, founder of CleanFlicks, "We would probably make the argument that the way we edit the movie and the way ClearPlay does it is pretty much the same way. It proves that there's a need for this." I'm convinced of Lines' sincerity. He truly believes it when he says that "Hollywood is making films for a certain group of people that like the violence, like the swear words, like the sex and nudity. What about the folks that don't like it? What are they supposed to do, just not watch the movie? See, to me, that's not a choice."
Five years ago this would have been considered crazy talk. Now, Lines is a visionary.n°
Jerry Weinstein is a refugee from scholarly book publishing and a reluctant ghostwriter. He teaches online contemporary lit classes for Barnes and Noble University (really!), mediates e-commerce conflicts for eBay, and has contributed to Time Out New York and Show Business Weekly.
, featuring curious yet marvelous infusions of cucumber and rose petal.
