Real-time movie censoring

Courtesy of the Drudge Report, an article on a new DVD player that Wal-Mart will begin selling shortly. Incorporating software from a firm called ClearPlay, the machine will make use of predefined classifications to decide when/where to skip ahead in a movie, so as to avoid playing content which falls into one of four objectionable categories: violence, language, sex/nudity and explicit drug use. The player allows users to automatically skip any combination of these categories, so long as the movie has been prescreened by ClearPlay editors, who then create a file containing the needed filtering information, which can be downloaded to the player.

Naturally, the movie industry is not pleased, arguing that this software violates the copyright licenses granted to consumers who buy/rent copies of their movies. This point is controversial. Other firms, like this one, specialize in producing "edited" versions of current movies and music, cutting out scenes deemed objectionable, and releasing physically altered copies. Early entrants to the "edited rerelease" market engaged in what was indisputably piracy, selling copies of edited films without compensating the film distributors for each copy sold (as would be the case through normal retail). However, current editing services, such as the one linked to here, require you to purchase a legal copy, which they then edit (if VHS, which would be expensive to duplicate en masse) or replace with an edited copy (if a DVD). While this certainly alters the director's intent, so long as the copy has been legally acquired, this strikes SC as being protected by the same "fair use" laws that allow you to otherwise copy legally acquired recordings for personal use. Where Hollywood may have a fair gripe with present-day editing businesses is that this doctrine is only intended to protect end-user behavior, not people seeking to make a business of redistributing the movies.

The ClearPlay DVD player appears to remove the editing objection, because the consumer's copy of the movie is never altered. Effectively, all it does is fast-forward the movie at a set of predetermined points, and there is no way any court in this country will uphold the idea that fast-forwarding a movie in a private home viewing session is illegal. ReplayTV (a competitor to Tivo) already has demonstrated this point legally by suriving challenges to its commercial-skipping feature.

Before going on about the technical issues involved, let's stop to dispense with one objection; namely, that if consumers don't like a movie, they should just not watch it. Hollywood is free to make whatever they like, and none of the people buying censorware are doing anything which interferes with the ability of the studios to disseminate R-rated films. This is a matter of what people want to be able to view privately, in their own homes, and especially about parental control. While SC would not personally purchase movies which have been edited by censors, no matter how well-intentioned, nor would he buy products designed solely to automate censoring of content, he doesn't think that the studios are on very solid ground by demanding that people not do what the fast-forward button has enabled for years. Furthermore, the censorship involved is on a very selective basis; this is not like the Websense episode, where filters meant to block one type of content had the side effect of blocking significant amounts of material that was clearly not targeted by the policy. The fact that Internet-filtering software is grossly inadequate to that particular task does not invalidate the right of employers to set policies about appropriate use of their property, and the same is true of parents at home. Assuming that some capability for parental control can be provided, SC doesn't see how anyone's rights are being violated. Nor, as long as the studios are paid the market price for a license to watch their films, how any economic injuries are being done.

This brings us to the question of whether linguistics could provide a solution that satisfies content providers as well as people seeking to reduce their exposure to obscene material. Present-day speech recognition is virtually real-time, but still lags the millisecond-level synchronization between audio and video streams that would be necessary to block obscene speech during playback. Your host is ignoring the fact that such a system would inevitably also censor some words that merely happen to rhyme with the desired stoplist; right now, we're just talking about technical feasibility. It might be possible to set up a DVD player with a 3-4 second buffer, run speech recognition on it, and insert beeps with the benefit of a second or two to ensure adequate processing. This would probably raise the cost of a DVD player by $50-60, to incorporate both the additional memory, as well as a special-purpose DSP, and would still only address the filtering of speech, not video. While this cost is probably more than acceptable to people who would otherwise spend even more on edited copies of movies, it doesn't accomplish as much as a system like ClearPlay can do right now, covering both audio and video. Doing the same kind of real-time, or even delayed, recognition of video is much more problematic, and your host won't even try to estimate the costs or the technical barriers that need to be overcome in order to provide hardware-based censoring of video content.

So finally, granting that editing of content is likely to be superior to any near-term technical solution, this raises the question of whether or not permitting such editing ought to be accepted as a matter of public policy, or market behavior. As I've already indicated, selling customers a service that essentially automates pressing the fast-forward button is more likely to survive legal challenges than other forms of editing out there. From Hollywood's perspective, the question is whether it's better to continue the fight, and risk setting a precedent which could later be interpreted to expand end-users' rights in ways not even contemplated right now. Or whether they might as well acknowledge the existence of demand for less-violent/profane entertainment, and work to create official versions which allow them to continue to sell directly to the consumers in question, perhaps even at the premium they've already demonstrated a willingness to pay. There are no technical barriers to doing so, at least for DVD releases -- the original DVD specification always included provisions for multiple camera angles and soundtracks, in part to allow for movies to be played according to different preferences, not all of which were the "original vision" shown in theaters. Extras like this are even considered a selling point for "special edition" releases of the same movie over and over and over. So the idea that showing a version of the movie at home which was not the director's original theatrical vision is bunk; it might be more interesting to find out why studio executives feel that it's legitimate to spend additional funds to create home releases featuring more violence, nudity and profanity, but not less.

Comments

[Carl Booth]

I am aware that ClearPlay's editing (not censoring) is not for everyone, but it is definitely for me. I do not claim to be the moral voice of the world, but I do not appreciate some of the things I see and hear in certain movies. As a long-time fan of the original Star Trek films, I was greatly dismayed with the profanity that flowed from the lips of Captain Kurk and Dr. McCoy in the motion picture versions of the TV show. With ClearPlay filtering, all that profanity (along with some other troubling things) was neatly clipped from those films that I own on DVD.

I have heard it said that if a film has so much bad in it, why watch it at all with ClearPlay or any other editing device? I beg to differ with such reasoning. The way I look at it, if the so-called offensive element is removed from that movie,then it is all right to be viewed by those of us who are sensitive to certain behavior that we consider inappropriate. For example, after connecting ClearPlay to my home entertainmet system, I put it to the test by playing "Crimson Tide" and "A Few Good Men", two movies that are rated R for strong profanity. The outcome? Because of ClearPlay filtering, not one bad word got through. I would show these movies to anybody.

Because of the Directors' Guild of America crying foul to the courts, ClearPlay's future is uncertain. That is a shame because it has done a lot of good for a lot of people who would pay good money to see movies without having to sit through offensive content.

Thank you for your article.

[Watch Movies]

What can I say- it is a though world we are living in :) If you don't want to watch the movie's content- don't watch the movie at all! I mean these scenes are there for a reason- the producer and the editor and the writer all decided they need to be there to create the statement of the movie so why go and try to sterilize it? I will never understand the logic behind this...

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I want a movie made after 1990-ish that's not supernatural-related and is just a really good horror movie. I've seen Halloween and Saw. They were pretty good but not the best. My all-time favorite horror movies are the three Scream movies, and The Last House on the Left.

Movies similar to those? Suggestions? Thanks!

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It really depends on what movie your watching, almost ALL indie movies have an honest feel to them, like about life, so in the event that you watch an indie film most likely it will someday happen to you, depending on what the movie is about. I love movies that are honest about life, and have great stories to tell.

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I hate to imagine the changes that will be presented shortly, we have seen 3D movies in HD, BlueRay and want to see who will come after this I'm anxious.

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The way I look at it, if the so-called offensive element is removed from that movie,then it is all right to be viewed by those of us who are sensitive to certain behavior that we consider inappropriate.

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That seems to that way apparently.