christophe thinks out loud

Smut Vendor Advocates Censorship! Film at 11!

I never thought I’d see the day in which I actually came down in favor of a censoring technology, but . . . well, I have. With, of course, some conditions.

As Mark Morford so colorfully describes, a company called ClearPlay has a technology that will skip over words and scenes that they think might be objectionable. You set the level of bowdlerization you want, and the player takes care of the rest.

I think this is a smashing idea. Really, I do. No sarcasm at all. I would gleefully get the required coding from ClearPlay to put the maximum possible nastiness code on any DVD we produce.

And then, can we get rid of this stupid idea that it makes sense for obscenity to be a crime?

Although you’d never know it to listen to the anti-smut zealots at the Department of Justice, owning pornographic material, even material that is legally obscene, is not a crime. The Supreme Court last took up this issue in Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 565 (1969), and they have never seemed interested in revisiting it. (This does not, of course, include child pornography, which is an entirely different thing, both legally and morally.)

It does seem a bit insane to have laws against the making and selling of something that is legal to own. Thus, the entire reason behind obscenity laws has to be prevent such things from falling into the hands of people who don’t want them. I’m in favor of that, too, although sending people to Federal prison for a number of years seems like a pretty heavy-handed way of controlling a distribution channel problem. So, let’s bring our smarts and our technology to the problem: Have a DVD player that has a “no-porn” bit, have a bit on the DVD that says, “this is porn!&rdquo, and (now we get to the wishful-thinking part of our entertainment) have that be an affirmative defense against obscenity charges.

People who want to watch porn, can watch porn. People who make porn for a living, can make porn. People who don’t want to watch porn will have the disk spat back out into their lap, just in case they thought Reaming & Screaming: Boss Bitches #17 was kid-friendly. (Take my word for it, those people exist.) Problem solved!

After all, this anti-porn crusade is just an attempt to make sure that people who don’t want to watch porn don’t have to, right? It certainly can’t be yet another assault on the First Amendment or blatant election-era pandering to a hard-right base, or anything so stupid as that? Thought not.

posted 16:15