Seth Finkelstein on the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act: Doesn't change much

Seth Finkelstein has a commentary on section 202 of the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act.

My summary of Seth's take on the Act: The Act creates an exception that's about as narrow as can be, and the only winners are a lobby of religious conservatives. On the other hand, there are no big losers. But it's too bad that the Act wasn't set up in a way that would have created or codified more freedoms regarding how we use material that's protected by copyright.

[Update: EEJD blog criticizes the tone of Seth's post: "These additional excerpts [from Seth's post] seem to communicate that Seth's problem has more to do with the fact that the bill is aimed at 'religious prudes' than the fact that the bill gives more control to consumers…"]

Section 202, you may or may not recall, makes it clear that people can legally sell equipment and software that "filters" DVD recordings of movies as they're being played. People who want to watch, say, "violence-free," "cursing- and profanity-free," or "sexual content-free" versions of movies can do so without keeping a finger on the fast-forward button, because they can buy these "filters" that will tell their DVD player what parts to skip automatically. The reason this was a potential copyright problem is that it looked like interposing that kind of technology might result in a derivative work of the original — something the copyright law forbids. (I vaguely recall a case in which someone produced "cleaned-up" VHS videotape copies of films, an even-bigger infringement problem because it resulted in an additional copy of most of the videorecording; the new law still doesn't allow that.) The boundaries weren't very clear. The Act eliminates the risk of infringement for a very narrow set of activities.