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.
