January 20, 2003
From the desk of Jane Galt:Very interesting article in Slate on the battle between directors and bowdlerizers. Looks like Mrs. Grundy has the law on her side.
Posted by Jane Galt at January 20, 2003 6:45 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound linksConsidering how much smarter you are than any liberal blogger I've seen, your site should be called "Asymmetrical Intelligence". Keep up the good work !
So why don't I ever get fanboi (actually, I'd prefer fangurl) gushing in my comments?
Well, as odd as it sounds, the bowdlerizers do have free speech on their side, don't they?
God bless America. :-)
This case is hugely important for digital media.
With physical good, the doctrine of first sale ensures that I can modify them (re-bind a book, annotate in the margins etc.) and re-sell them without having to contact the original author at all.
In the digital domain, this becomes problematic - as creating copies is now straightforward, there is no longer a scarcity defined by the physical good.
Hence (part of) my proposal over at http://mediagora.com - that this notion should be extended to the digital domain, such that I can distribute derivative works of an existing work, as long as my customers buy a copy of the source work too.
If I were to put some of this filtering software on a copy of "Meet John Doe" and run the DVD in reverse, would it be possible to strip off Gary Cooper's clothes and find out once and for all whether -- uh, well, you know.
What if I didn't want to read an article in a newspaper. Could the writers and editors have the courts force me to read the newspaper in their prescribed order and completely. Does this pertain to books? What if I didn't really care to see Star Wars Episode I, but want to see Episode II?
I am so confused, I think I need the gubbmint (and/or Hollywood) to tell me how to live my life.
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