Congress legalizes ClearPlay
Not that there was ever any doubt that Congress would pass this, but yesterday the House of Representatives approved the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005. Besides making it explicitly legal for companies like ClearPlay to sell software which automatically edits out anything that anyone might possibly find objectionable from DVDs, the bill also makes it a federal crime to use a video camera to record films in movie theaters (punishable by up to three years in prison for the first offense) and sets a penalty of up to ten years in prison for sharing a movie or a song prior to its commercial release. We've got no beef with the ClearPlay-enabling part of the legislation (for the most part), since people should be able to do what they want with a DVD they've bought and paid for, but that was really just a smokescreen to railroad the rest of the bill, which may as well have been written by the MPAA and RIAA's lobbyists. The bill now heads to President Bush, who is expected to sign it into law.
