The LA Times and Reuters report that, in the US, Congress has passed the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act (FECA). This makes it a federal crime, punishable by up to three years imprisonment, to use video cameras to record films in cinemas and then distribute the copies. The Act also clarifies that it is not an infringement of copyright to produce software that allows viewers to skip acts of sex and violence while watching DVDs. Hollywood film companies tend to oppose such software, arguing that since it alters their works without their permission, it violates their copyright. The Act though remains to be considered by the House of Representatives.
Don’t take this to the cinema – or else!
The IPKat wonders whether, in the UK, the removal of sex and violence would count as an infringement of the author's moral right to object to derogatory treatment of his work.
More on skipping here, here and here
Do you want to reuse the IPKat content? Please refer to our
Policies section.
If you have any queries or requests for permission, please get in touch with the IPKat team.
Comments
Post a Comment
All comments must be moderated by a member of the IPKat team before they appear on the blog. Comments will not be allowed if the contravene the IPKat policy that readers' comments should not be obscene or defamatory; they should not consist of ad hominem attacks on members of the blog team or other comment-posters and they should make a constructive contribution to the discussion of the post on which they purport to comment.
It is also the IPKat policy that comments should not be made completely anonymously, and users should use a consistent name or pseudonym (which should not itself be defamatory or obscene, or that of another real person), either in the "identity" field, or at the beginning of the comment. Current practice is to, however, allow a limited number of comments that contravene this policy, provided that the comment has a high degree of relevance and the comment chain does not become too difficult to follow.
Learn more here: http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/p/want-to-complain.html