Anti-Piracy Bill Sweet, Sour for Hollywood

Congress is poised to pass a bill ratcheting up the penalties for movie and music bootlegging, handing Hollywood a long-sought victory in its drive to prosecute pirates.

But the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005, which the House is expected to approve today, includes a bitter pill for the studios: It would legalize products that electronically snip offensive scenes or words from DVDs.

The measure -- which President Bush is expected to sign -- would in effect terminate a lawsuit that film directors and Hollywood studios brought against ClearPlay Inc., a company whose electronic filters let viewers skip over violent, suggestive or profane sections of DVDs. A federal judge in Colorado has yet to rule on the case.

Sponsored by Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), the bill would make it a federal felony to record a movie as it was being projected in a theater. It also would ban offering a movie on a file-sharing network such as Kazaa before it goes on sale at video stores, or a song before it’s released for sale.

The measure would set a maximum penalty of five years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine for first offenders. The maximum penalties would double for second or later offenses.

For Hollywood, most bootlegging starts with a person using a camcorder to surreptitiously record a film in a theater. Within days of a major film’s release to theaters, copies start popping up online and in markets around the globe.

The entertainment industry has been making slow headway against the problem. It has persuaded 24 states to enact their own measures against camcording in theaters -- it’s a misdemeanor in California, for instance. The industry also has launched security programs that train and reward theater employees and helped state prosecutors bring criminal charges against half a dozen suspected professional camcorder pirates. But backers of the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act said more steps were needed to prod federal investigators and prosecutors into getting involved.

Laura Tunberg, who was the top anti-piracy executive at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. until the studio was acquired by Sony Corp., said making theater camcording a federal felony “would entice prosecutors to go after bigger fish” among video recorders. The bill also would make it easier to prosecute online pirates, she said, by removing the requirement that the bootlegged works be worth more than $1,000 -- a tough threshold to meet for movies and songs not yet available for sale.

MGM executives lobbied for more than two years for the provisions against recording and sharing movies, with the help of other studios and theater owners. Tunberg said the provisions that would legalize electronic editing services were disappointing, but the chairman of a key House subcommittee, Rep. Lamar S. Smith (R-Texas), insisted upon them.

“Lamar Smith comes along and says, ‘Well, if you want your anti-piracy bill, this is what you’re going to get with it.’ What do you say, no? I’m not going to support my own legislation?” Tunberg said.

Smith could not be reached for comment. The electronic editing provision was backed by social conservatives and by technology firms, whose political action committees were among the largest contributors to Smith’s last campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

A Directors Guild of America spokesman said it would “continue in its efforts to vigorously defend the right of directors to protect their work from unauthorized alteration.” The guild’s suit also targets firms that sell movies permanently edited to remove violent or suggestive content, an approach the bill would not protect.

Spokesmen for two technology advocacy groups -- Public Knowledge and the Electronic Frontier Foundation -- said the issue was whether viewers would be able to do what they wished with the movies they owned.

“Once you have the DVD in your living room, it’s nobody’s business how you choose to watch it,” EFF attorney Fred von Lohmann said.