Number 98: April 27, 2005

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This week in Katydid:

• Serving Two Masters
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Serving Two Masters
Today, President Bush signed the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act, which updates U.S. intellectual property law. The legislation moved quickly through congress despite criticism that a portion of the law, The Family Movie Act of 2005, clearly favors the technology of one company, ClearPlay. Their service allows DVD owners to skip content they find offensive automatically during playback.

The artists behind the films consistently have opposed any attempt at prior censorship of what they consider a work of art, but the entertainment industry as a whole supported the law, primarily because it puts measures in place to combat bootleggers of intellectual property.

However, one might wonder why the entertainment industry doesn't fight rating systems and similar attempts to sanitize entertainment for public consumption. It essentially calls their product immoral, an impression that marketers would normally want to avoid.

The reason, I think, is that the industry is not immoral but amoral. Capitalism is not naturally corrupt but essentially without moral character beyond that of its constituents. Parents, like me, welcome tools such as the V-chip and ClearPlay that help us provide the role of censor for our children. Once you understand the tastes of the committee that provides the service, you can set their filters to suit your own judgment.

However, the same identification tool works for those who would seek out strong content. Some people may choose films they wouldn't watch otherwise, precisely because there is partial nudity, sexual situations, or intense violence. They may similarly pass on a movie rated R merely for strong language.

The ratings for entertainment in many ways have given producers incentive to increase the objectionable content in order to draw the prurient audience. The industry gets to market the same content to two different audiences. They can tout their support of Family Friendly technology, while continuing to ramp up the violence for the non-family audience. They can appear to be moral to one audience, while cynically appealing to the baser interests of another market.

Not immoral, but amoral, and quite profitable. However, it robs an opportunity for the market to appeal for a product that fits in with its sensibility. The moral character of the market in the absence of prior censorship will demand content that it finds appealing and artists and studios would normally comply; but with this technology, they can push the limits as hard as they want and leave it to the ClearPlay committee to sort it out.

Somehow, I don't think the intent of the sponsors of the Family Movie Act of 2005 was to make it easier for studios to create more content that families found objectionable.

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Kevin Troy Darling

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