Thursday, April 08, 2004

The Three Minute Porn Flick

Wal-Mart and Kmart, two of the nation's biggest retailers, are planning to sell a new DVD player that includes a technology that has riled Hollywood -- a controversial program that can automatically skip sexual content, graphically violent scenes and language deemed offensive...[more]

Of course it doesn't say who gets to decide what counts as offensive, but I'll bet it's not going to me OR you. All morality filters are not built alike, but they are built on a common inherently-flawed premise: that a small group of people, who just happen to be able to make and sell a technology, who are not you, can and should determine where lines of morality get drawn for a culture, or at least a buying community, of which you are a part. By definition, and to a one, I find the filter-as-product worthy of suspicion, maybe even scorn.

Alternate titles for today's blogentry include Warning: This Program has Been Edited For Narrow Minds, Filters Suck, Who Watches The Watchers? and "New DVD Player Won't Play Anything Made After 1952"(thanks, Fark).

posted by boyhowdy | 12:30 AM |

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