Censorship in DVD's - Utah style.

In this New York Times article David Pogue discusses how a new technology in DVD player works: ClearPlay.

DVD players supporting this technology will allow you to filter some contents in DVD's - foul language, sex and violence and more. You do this thru filters made for specific movies, created by human editors. 100 filters are built-in, 500 more can be downloaded (for a fee) from ClearPlay's website. Nice attempt to sanitize DVD movies, but not one without shortcomings. The weakness of ClearPlay is not the technology, but on the fact that what your ClearPlay - enabled DVD player will skip is not really your choice, but those of who made the movie filters - the human editors. Your take on whether their taste of what's to be skipped and what should be shown maybe one of the biggest factor you'd have to consider if DVD players enabled with this technology are for you.

My two cents? Of course, I have not tested any player (heck, I don't get to test stuff) but based on what the article says, ClearPlay tries to make movies suitable to audiences beyond to what it was originally made for. Hmmm. questionable. Violence and or Sexual content may not just be reflected on some specific scenes but on the overall theme of the movie as well-can you really sanitize some movies without ruining the original form of it? This compromise between integrity of the movie as an original work of its creators and thoroughness and accuracy of the filters is something that is really hard to do.

Of course, i haven't mentioned the Movimakers complaining about ClearPlay. But the issue is of more important to the consumers who would eventually be using the technology. To quote a text from Mr Fred "zAmboni" Locklear of Ars Technica:

One can see why Hollywood studios are complaining about the ClearPlay technology. The ClearPlay editors are the ones who override the writers and directors visions to decide on what are filtered, and do a ham-handed job about it. But the studios' arguments fall apart because the consumer consciously chose to purchase a ClearPlay enabled DVD player and chose to enable the filters. The most valid complaints may come from the purchasers of ClearPlay DVD players after sensitive eyes see violent images they thought would be filtered out.

I agree.

Link courtesy of Ars Technica