The House of Representatives passed copyright legislation on Tuesday that would dole out criminal penalties to those who make unauthorized recordings of films in movie theaters.
The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005 (HR357) also would permit technologies that allow users to skip objectionable content in movies viewed at home.
The bill passed by voice vote and now heads to the president, who is expected to sign it into law. An identical bill (S167) already passed in the Senate earlier this year.
“We’re thrilled that it passed,” said Bill Aho, CEO of ClearPlay, a company that sells software enabling parents to skip over the sex and violence in Hollywood DVDs. “I think it’s a great bill for families. I think it’s great for parents and I think it’s great for the technology sector.”
People should be allowed to use technology to watch movies “their way” in their own home, he said.
ClearPlay and other similar services were sued by the movie studios, the Director’s Guild of America and 13 individual directors for copyright violations and for altering their work. The technology companies filed a motion for summary judgment and were awaiting a ruling in the 10th District Court in Colorado.
The technology company plans to introduce two new DVD machines with filtering capabilities this summer. Aho said that ClearPlay looks forward to integrating its technology into more devices.
“We have multiple companies that we’ve been talking to that have been waiting for resolution (on the lawsuit),” Aho said.
Movie theater owners were among those supportive of the portion of the bill that cracked down on surreptitious camcording.
“This legislation will permit theatre operators to combat movie theft at its main source, by intercepting and detaining thieves who brazenly attempt to copy movies from our screens,” Kendrick Macdowell, general counsel and director of government affairs for the National Association of Theatre Owners, said in a statement.
Consumer advocacy groups which have been active in the debate about intellectual property legislation did not object to the bill.
“This is basically the low-hanging fruit from last year,” said Art Brodsky, a spokesman for Public Knowledge, a consumer advocacy group. “These are the relatively non-controversial parts of the omnibus copyright legislation from last year.”
Technology and consumer advocates squared off against Hollywood and the music labels on proposed copyright legislation last year — the Inducing Infringment of Copyrights Act, or Induce Act — that would hold technology companies liable for encouraging their users to infringe copyright. It never passed.
Congress is not expected to take up this inducement issue again until a decision is reached in a copyright case before the Supreme Court, MGM Studios v. Grokster. In that case, the entertainment companies want to hold file-sharing services liable for copyright infringement of their users.
“Compared to proposals like the Induce Act, the provisions of this bill are much less dangerous to innovation and the public’s rights,” said Fred von Lohmann, senior attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Read the complete story @ Wired
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