CBS News: President Bush has signed the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005 which does a couple of main things. First, it makes it illegal to take a camcorder into a cinema to record a movie with gaol terms for a first offence of up to three years. I was under the impression that most pirated movies originated with insiders making a copy, but according to Dan Glickman, the head of the Motion Picture Association of America, "more than 90 percent of pirated movies are recorded by people in the audience with a camcorder". There are also penalties for insiders leaking content and criminal penalties for making copyrighted content available on the internet.
The second thing the legislation does is allow companies that modify movies to make them suitable for children to continue operating without fear of legal reprisal from the studios, who say the modifications infringe their rights. "The intent of the movie-filtering technology is to sanitize movies to protect children," said Rep. Diane Watson, D-Calif. "While I support family-friendly entertainment, I believe this method is not only a violation of filmmakers' copyright protections but also an infringement of their artistic vision."
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