The Family Entertainment and What Act?
Though I'm glad to know that the National Film Preservation Board is closer and closer to being reauthorized with an increased budget, must it be linked to The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005 (pdf of the act here.
First, there's the tiresome and pandering use of "family" (a reference to providing an exemption for infringment to anyone who alters a work to "skip audio and video content," i.e., skipping over shots of boobies so the kids won't be traumatized.)
Worse, film preservation is linked by proxy to the act's intellectual property provisions, which include criminalization of "recording motion pictures in a motion picture exhibition facility. " There's also the authorization of the United States Sentencing Commission to consider strengthening the sentencing guidelines for intellectual property crimes...including the possibility of a "sentencing enhancement" (!) for unlawful distribution of a work yet to be published.
I know this is the way the government works; I know I should be glad to have the NFPF moving forward at all. But something about it makes me feel a little unclean.
First, there's the tiresome and pandering use of "family" (a reference to providing an exemption for infringment to anyone who alters a work to "skip audio and video content," i.e., skipping over shots of boobies so the kids won't be traumatized.)
Worse, film preservation is linked by proxy to the act's intellectual property provisions, which include criminalization of "recording motion pictures in a motion picture exhibition facility. " There's also the authorization of the United States Sentencing Commission to consider strengthening the sentencing guidelines for intellectual property crimes...including the possibility of a "sentencing enhancement" (!) for unlawful distribution of a work yet to be published.
I know this is the way the government works; I know I should be glad to have the NFPF moving forward at all. But something about it makes me feel a little unclean.
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