This popped up yesterday. GW, through the Family Movie Act, gave legal protection to services like Utah-based ClearPlay’s smut-removal system. The system reads the DVD ID and then downloads a set of timestamps that indicate naughty material is present. The playback, while slightly jerky, is clean as a whistle.
Speaking of things being slightly jerky, this whole bill is pretty jerky. A parent using ClearPlay or any other device presupposes two things—a movie contains “questionable material” and that that self-same parent doesn’t care enough about their kid to pay attention to what the kid is looking at and to watch it with them, explaining the positives and negatives of some behavior. They are fobbing their parenting off onto a machine. Granted, families do that every day with the old boob tube, but a family can choose which films enter the home. Therefore, instead of legalizing censorship why not stop putting Die Hard on your Netflix queue, Dad. Yippie kay-ay indeed.
Bush OKs Smut-Stripping Tech [Wired]
