The out-of-control control freaks in Congress have struck again. A bill originally introduced by Representative Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the Family Movie Act, received further support from Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). The bill lays out a guarantee of legal protection for technologies used in the home to filter unwanted content. Notice the clever and deceptive use of key words, such as "guarantee" and "legal protection."

What the bill actually does is create a profit center for capitalist opportunists to make money off of movies created by other people. It will allow a company to create and sell a filter that will "remove" scenes and dialog from DVD movies that the company deems inappropriate. These companies will therefore profit on the creativity of others, protected from copyright laws, without having to pay any royalties. So from a business perspective, it is a flawed and one-sided model that unfairly allows others—in this case, conservative and censorious right-wing nut jobs—to create their own versions of someone else's work.

Even worse than the parasitic profit-making is the potential for ideological censorship. Imagine a neo-Nazi publisher being able to re-publish "The Diary of Ann Frank" by scrubbing the "objectionable" content to make it more National Socialist Pary friendly than it was in its original published form. Sound ridiculous? When you start down the path of censorship, the lines quickly become vague and subjective.

Here's an idea for parents who are concerned about their precious children being subjected to "objectionable" content: DON'T RENT OR BUY THE DVD. I am constantly in awe of the artificial bubble of denial these people populate. They believe they can control what their children see and hear. They are fools. If they spent as much time discussing controversial topics as they did finding ways to shut out all constructive dialog, they would have better educated children with whom they could have intelligent discussions. Kids know when they are being snowed.