This week in America, “Dubya” signed a legislation named the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005, which is a “movie piracy and filtering bill” (according to GovTrack).
Now, I don’t mind it being illegal to make distribution copies (ie. not backups in case something should go wrong), but that filtering part of it just makes me mad. I mean, when will it stop? So much for the “land of the free and the home of the brave” when the freedom is ripped from you by means of additional legislation, lawsuits or overzealous politicians, and the brave are just sitting around, waiting for someone else to do something about it.
Quoted from the CNN news story:
The bill gives legal protections to the fledgling filtering technology that helps parents automatically skip or mute sections of commercial movie DVDs. Bush signed it privately and without comment, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said.
There goes the artistic freedom out the window along with the actual parenting responsibility of parents. It’s simply allowing parents to slack off when it comes to being parents to their children. I mean, for crapping out loud, the movie ratings are there for a reason, right? “Not intended for ages below 18”. OK, so don’t let your children under 18 watch it, then.
In other political news from the US this week, Gerald Allen (Alabama) wants to ban all books containing subjects about homosexuality as well as books written by homosexual authors. As librarian Donna Schremser points out, this seems to be the beginning of some sort of “though police”. Now that’s 1984. George Orwell might’ve been right after all, he just missed the year of the events by a few decades.
By the way, from what I can tell, you can read the entire book 1984 by George Orwell online, and for free. Also, I’d recommend watching the movie with the same name, starring John Hurt (“Alien”, “Contact”, “Hellboy”).