April 09, 2004

Decency Filter: Clearplay, RCA and WalMart are working together to clean up the movies you watch. This is an interesting circumvention of the problems Hollywood has been suing Clearplay for. [via /.]

Obviously nobody is forcing anybody to watch movies this way, but I'd love your thoughts on the subject (though I don't think anybody is interested in seeing another round of WalMart slamming). What I find most interesting is RCA, rarely a competitor in tech these days finding a new in to consumer hearts and homes.

  • What isn't clearly stated is just how this device 'censors' stuff: skips scenes? Black blocks or mosaic'd filter over the naughty parts, a la censored japanese porn? Muted sound and a blue screen with "SCENE MISSING", or "COVER YOUR EARS AND CLOSE YOUR EYES FOR THE NEXT 2 MINS" in it? There's just one thing I'd like to know: who the @#*&? let the Onion writers start scripting this Dickensian (as in Philip K.) reality we've been living in for the past, say, 4 years?
  • The way I imagine it to work is that the player has a database of DVD titles that works essentially as a playlist. Something like this: 01:00:00:01 Play 01:05:10:30 Bleep 01:24:23:12 Skip 01:28:23:29 Resume ... Further, you should be able to download new titles through the player in Tivo fashion. So I kind of imagine a generation of young Mormon* boys scouring the video store for T&A titles not on the list... The thing that bothers me is that it seems like such a cheap and easy way to avoid the moral question involved in watching these movies and escape into a fantastists delusion that swear words don't exist and sex is never mentioned. *Cuz the company is from SLC. Fundies can have fun with it too, I suppose.
  • Maybe an inappropriate response, but every time I read something like this I feel glad I'm not American. (Then I remember porn is basically illegal in this country, and that every thing I do is monitored and recorded, and thats when the crying starts.)
  • Erm, dng, for all intents and purposes us yanks are there too.
  • Welcome to the free market, where we can steal music, alter artistic works to suit our personal beliefs and include editing as a form of personal expression. If you're gonna' embrace libertarianism, make sure you slip it the tongue.
  • Hey, dng, at least you still get naughty magazines in shops and Page Three girls. I was agog the first time I stepped into a UK bookshop.
  • I'm moving to Canada
  • so i should stop buying my pr0n from walmart then, eh?