An entertainment company that is acting on a 2005 federal law to let parents filter sex, violence and profanity from movies is under attack in Hollywood, drawing return fire from at least 16 family groups who are threatening to urge a boycott by the 52 million “values audience.”
VidAngel, whose motto is “watch movies however the bleep you want,” took advantage of the Family Movie Act of 2005 and created a filtering system for users who are eager to watch movies but are concerned about offensive content.
It has a simple model: Consumers buy a full-price movie through its system and choose what words and actions they want filtered out. VidAngel does the work and then streams the movie to the consumer. Then they can buy the movie permanently or pay as little as $1 for one view.
VidAngel sees it as a win-win for studios. An individual movie is bought for every customer, and more customers are buying because they can filter out the offending language and scenes that would have kept them from watching.
But Hollywood said the model isn’t legal, amounts to a cheap streaming system for their products and is angered that the movie industry’s art is being tampered with.
The fight has turned into an ugly legal battle, and now many Washington-based family groups are going to bat in court for VidAngel, saying the service is legal under the Family Movie Act.
Media Research Center founder and President Brent Bozell told the Washington Examiner, “Hollywood should be applauding VidAngel for saving them consumers who otherwise won’t buy their product. Instead, Hollywood is on the warpath against VidAngel. They want families poisoned.
“In effect, Hollywood execs are saying, ‘You can only watch our movies if you let us keep all the gratuitous garbage that offends your family.’ How reprehensible of Hollywood. Good for VidAngel for fighting Goliath.”
Donna Rice Hughes, whose Enough Is Enough group has convinced McDonald’s restaurants and others to filter porn from free Internet offered at stores, added, “Protecting youth from pornography and other objectionable online content should be shared by the government, corporate America and the parents.
“It seems to me that VidAngel is making it much easier for parents to be empowered to easily and economically manage the type of film content their children view online.”
Whatever the outcome, polling data provided to the Examiner shows that millions want to be able to filter movies and TV shows and amount to an enormous market Hollywood is missing.
The survey found that the “values audience” represent 37 percent of the entertainment market, are mostly Christian and have kids. Some 57 percent said it is very important for them to know the content is clean before watching, with nearly three of four parents eager to use a filter system.
If Trump loses, GOP ‘bloodletting,’ then forgetting
A Donald Trump loss to Hillary Clinton wouldn’t be the end of the Republican Party and could even bolster its hold on the House for decades to come, according to a top GOP lawyer.
Sure, a Trump defeat would lead to bloodletting, but Benjamin L. Ginsberg, who ran George W. Bush’s bid to win the 2000 Florida recount, and thus the election, is predicting a big midterm election victory for Republicans.
And, he told a Council on Foreign Relations audience last week, that it also would likely help pack Republicans into governor’s offices key in the upcoming congressional redistricting.
“If Hillary Clinton is president, and not Donald Trump, we will gather in a circular firing squad of incredible ferocity for about six months. And there will be a bloodletting,” Ginsberg said.
But then, he said, the off-year election will arrive in 2018 and if history repeats, Republicans would score major victories.
“If you are going to look at off-year elections, in a Hillary Clinton presidency, Republicans are going to do quite well, including in the governor’s races, the 36 governors races in 2018, that will have a great say in the redistricting that will last for the next decade,” said the partner at Jones Day law firm.
And then all would be forgotten.
“Republicans will believe, because they did well in the 2018 midterm elections, that, ‘Nah, not really anything to worry about.’ You’ll have another 17 candidates on the ballot in 2020, and you know, go on from there,” he said.
Mark Shields says it should have been Elizabeth Warren
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has finally hit the campaign trail hard for Clinton’s presidency, but many of her cheerleaders still wish it was Clinton supporting Warren for president.
Count longtime columnist and PBS pundit Mark Shields in that camp. Shields told a Georgetown University audience last week that Warren would have won in a runaway had she jumped in.
“The Democratic nominee this year would have been Elizabeth Warren, make no mistake about it,” he said. “She was the embodiment of both candidates, she was the feminist who took on the big boys and kept them honest, and wasn’t afraid to stand up to them, knew what she believed and actually stood by it.
“I have no question that she would have won the Democratic nomination.”
Shields lumped Clinton in with Donald Trump, saying voters can’t trust either of them. He said Clinton, who served on a congressional Watergate panel probing the Nixon-era scandal, should have learned that coverups don’t work, but didn’t.
“I do not understand Hillary Clinton,” he said, ripping her “compulsive secrecy.”
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
