US Legislation -- Family Movie Act

baalazai · Post by **baalazai** » Sat Nov 20, 2004 12:42 pm

Ok, so I read through this article and there is a piece of it, Family Movie Act, that I'm sure people would be interested in finding out about. See, it turns out that there is a Senator that would like to make it illegal to skip through commercials after you've recorded a T.V. show. There are quite a few other pieces within the document that have already been approved by the house/senate, and some of it is quite discouraging.

Beawolf · Post by **Beawolf** » Sat Nov 20, 2004 2:59 pm

I could be reading it wrong but it looks to me like the family movie act wants to make it possible to skip past objectionable material and the like. It's "The entertainment community" that is currently making this difficult in some cases. But again, I could be reading this wrong.

Grakt · Post by **Grakt** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 8:34 am

Its trying to make Tivos and that kind of equipment illegal because people use it to skip past all the commercials, which is how the entertainment community make money on broadcast TV. Never work, its like the file sharing on the internet, internet phones, and all the other new technology out there. The business world is too stuck on old ways and refuse to see that their businesses are changing. Instead of adapting, they're just trying to make it illegal.

baalazai · Post by **baalazai** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 3:26 pm

Beawolf wrote:I could be reading it wrong but it looks to me like the family movie act wants to make it possible to skip past objectionable material and the like. It's "The entertainment community" that is currently making this difficult in some cases. But again, I could be reading this wrong.

I think you read the first part, but here is part of the text that I was concerned about...

Now, the affirmative right to watch and skip parts of the content that a consumer has legally obtained only exists if certain conditions are met: no commercial or promotional ads may be skipped.

There's quite a few other things in the act, but that was probably the one that had the most notible impact on people. Basically, if you record something in any format, when you playback the recording, you would be unable to skip past portions that you were not interested in (e.g. commercials). What's worrisome is that this could extend into the internet and possibly promote ads on web pages, make it illegal for browsers to contain ad pop-up blockers, etc. And, while it may be difficult to enforce, it would allow corporations to legally make people watch something they don't want to.