I linked to Joe Gratz’s legal blog below when discussing the 2257 regulations, but here’s something else interesting from his site: This discussion of the company TVMyPod.com, which will sell you a video iPod pre-loaded with your favorite DVDs (which you have to buy from them along with the iPod), getting around the video iPod’s digital-rights-management system. It’s basically just a company doing for you what you could learn to do for yourself in about ten minutes on the internet, but the idea that a market has sprung up for this is kind of interesting.

Joe Grat, over at his legal and intellectual property-oriented blog, writes about a setback for the Justice Department in its enforcement of the 2257 regulations, a set of record-keeping requirements designed, many feel, to severely hamper and restrict the adult entertainment industry on the internet. As few have pointed out, however, these regulations also regulate content by all manner of film producers, including independents, and, as I’ve been blogging throughout the last few months, the ramifications of these rules needs to be debated in the indie community. For now, the fight over 2257 is being waged by the adult industry’s […]

The people over at Boing Boing have a piece up linking to this article on Fleshbot, this piece on SFist, and blogger Violet’s post on her Tiny Nibbles blog, all of which detail the decision by Tribe.com to apply Federal 2257 regulations to pages created by Tribe users. After December 20, all Tribe pages containing sexual content will be rendered “invisible” to the public at large. Comments Violet: “Now everyone is confused about whether or not they can put up a picture of their own boobies and not end up in federal prison. They’re confusing everyone, and kind of really […]

Just below I linked to The Hollywood Reporter about the movie industry’s slow awakening to the impact on the Justice Department’s 2257 regulations on both studio and independent production. There’s a bunch of articles on the web this morning about H.R. 3132, the Children’s Safety Act, which passed the House and, if it gets through the Judiciary Committee and passes the Senate, will expand the onerous recordkeeping requirements of the 2257 in alarming ways. A number of the articles are on legal and cyber blogs. Here’s a piece on BoingBoing that details the consequences, and it includes PDF links to […]

Back in July I posted this blog about the Federal Government’s new “2257” regulations and wondered why the independent film community, which can mobilize armies at the withdrawal of promotional screeners, has had so little to say about this bill which, while targeting the adult entertainment industry, looks to spread quite a bit of collateral damage. A week later I posted again after some readers added their own comments to the end of my original article. Now, today, finally, I read in The Hollywood Reporter a piece by Brooks Bollek which describes a ‘buried clause” in the regulation that could […]

Since I don’t think readers of this blog always click through to the occasional comments linked below the entries, I thought I’d highlight here a link provided by an anonymous respondent to my blog titled “The Skin Game,” below. In it I highlighted the absurdity of the Department of Justice’s new “2257” regulations and wondered why the indie community, which marshalled a veritable army of producers-turned-activists when promotional screeners were banned, has been completely silent on this issue which involves not only de facto censorship but privacy rights, sidestepping the Fourth Amendment and more. (Currently, the Free Speech Coalition, which […]

Filmmaker has been on press the last week so that has meant that we’ve been slacking on the blog. But one of the things I’ve been meaning to post about is the government’s new “2257” regulations which, on the sheer basis of their audacity, should be provoking outrage in the independent world. Strangely, though, our indie sector has been quiet on this government intrusion on content creators, probably because it specifically targets adult entertainment. Anyway, this Newsday editorial does a far better job than I could have explaining why you should care about these new regulations. Here’s an excerpt: “Regardless […]