On April 19, the House approved, by voice vote, an anti-piracy bill (S. 167) that includes the text of the Family Movie Act. The Senate approved the measure on February 1 (see The Source, 2/4/05). It will now go to the White House for President Bush’s signature.
Sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), the Family Movie Act would exempt from copyright protection and trademark laws technology designed to filter out unwanted audio and video content on a DVD or videotape for individual consumers. The bill would require that the software manufacturers provide clear and conspicuous notice that the movie being shown has been altered in a way that was unintended by the director or copyright holder. The notification requirement would apply only to technology manufactured 180 days after the bill’s enactment.
Expressing his support for the Family Movie Act, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) stated, “Raising children may be the toughest job in the world. Parents need all the help they can get, and they should be able to determine what their children see on the screen. Yes, we parents might mute dialogue that others deem crucial, or we might fast forward over scenes that others consider essential, but that is irrelevant. Parents should be able to mute or skip over anything they want if they feel it is in the best interest of their children.” He added, “Just as the author of a book should not be able to force someone to read that book in any particular manner or order, a studio or director should not be able to force our children to watch a movie in a particular way. No one can argue with a straight face it should be against the law to skip over a few pages or even entire chapters of a book. So, too, it should not be illegal to skip over a few words or scenes in a movie. The Family Movie Act ensures that parents have such rights.”
Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA) argued that “there is no one who thinks parents do not have and should not have the right to skip over, pass up or omit scenes of any video production they think are inappropriate for their children to see. No one debates that. No one debates they have the right to do that. What some of us do debate is the right of a commercial enterprise to peddle a technology which fundamentally alters the creator’s work any more than some publisher has the right to take an unabridged version of a book that is under copyright, in order to excerpt and take out objectionable patches of that book, and then make a commercial profit without the permission of the copyright owner in peddling that book. That is the issue underlying our opposition to the Family Movie Act.”
Although the House approved a version of the Family Movie Act last year, the Senate did not act on the legislation before the 108th Congress adjourned for the year (see The Source, 10/8/04).
