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May 01, 2004

CONGRESS AS ARBITERS OF COPYRIGHT DISPUTES?

In 2002 Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Steven Soderbergh and other members of the Direcors Guild of American filed suit in Colorado's 10th District Court against the Utah based ClearPlay on the grounds of copyright infringement.  The basis of the suit in 2002 was ClearPlay's filtering software that allowed consumers to program their DVD players to skip violence, swearing, nudity and other potentially objectionable content in DVD films being played.  The issues in the suit are even more pressing now since ClearPlay has announced that they will begin selling prepackaged DVD players that incorporate their software at Walmart.  Accoding to oneClearPlay executve:

"I think the American public is concerned and is looking for a solution, '' said Bill Aho, chief executive officer of ClearPlay Inc.

One Congresmen has even gotten in on the dispute, House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. has urged the committee's copyright panel to look into the dispute, with a mid-May target for a hearing.

From the Big News Network:

Chairman Sensenbrenner would prefer the parties to reach agreement to thereby eliminate the need for Congress to act on this issue, but nonetheless the chairman is prepared to have a hearing on it and is obviously closely monitoring the situation, he said.

If the company and the directors can't settle their differences, then Sensenbrenner plans to introduce legislation that, if passed, would end the dispute, said The Hollywood Reporter.

Introduce legislation?  Hmmm.... is it really needed at this juncture?  The case is still pending before the District Court and copyright infringement disputes are typically handled by the Courts and not Congress -- is it wise to jump in and introduce legislation to correct a problem that may not even be a problem?  The basis for the copyright infringement claims is that the process of stripping out the "offensive matter" creates a derivative work and/or the persons/software that strips out the offensive material is contributing to the infringement of a copyright.  The counter argument is that the "re-editing" is fair use of the material. 

Berkeley held an interesting roundtable discussion on this issue in 2003 and an audio transcript is available.  This case raises some interesting questions concerning the right of individuals to refrain from being "exposed" to a director's offensive material. 
  

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at 12:56 PM.
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