It was businessas usual at ClearPlay Inc. Thursday in South Salt Lake. In a suite of offices bordered by the freeway on one side and Evco House of Hose on the other, workers hovered over video monitors in one room, filtering "objectional" content in movies, while in the next room techies labored over computer chips, working on improving the cutting-edge technology that makes films family-friendly.
Out front, brothers Lee and Matt Jarman, the company's founders, were working the phones, courting ever-elusive investors. Only Bill Aho, the CEO, was gone — off to Los Angeles for yet another televised debate on CNN with Hollywood director Marshall Herskovitz about the morality of filtering immorality.
But if nothing had changed, everything had changed, and all because of one man's signature.
When President Bush put his name to the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act this past Wednesday afternoon, officially making it a law of the land, ClearPlay could finally inhale and have a reasonably good expectation that an exhale would follow.
Or, as one supporter e-mailed the Jarmans after the president of the United States jumped on board, "Now I can use ClearPlay without guilt."
It's a complicated world we live in, and no one knows that better than the people who try to tame Hollywood movies. For nearly 10 years, ever since Matt Jarman dreamed up his technology that makes it possible to filter unwanted violence, sex and language out of a movie without altering the film itself, there have been hurdles to clear. Not the least of which was a 2002 lawsuit filed by Hollywood directors against any and all companies, including ClearPlay, attempting to offer alternatives to the certified director's cut.
"I remember approaching investors when we were just starting up," says Jarman. "They would say, 'We like what you're doing but we can't get involved. You guys are standing in front of a tank.' "
About a $500 billion tank, if you add up the net worth of all the Hollywood studios and directors fighting movie-tampering in its various forms.
But little old ClearPlay, born and raised in Salt Lake City, persevered, never swerving from the position that it is entirely legal, and ethical, for movie-watchers to skip past objectionable material they are viewing in the privacy of their own homes. If it were not so, why is there a fast-forward button on the remote control?
This past week, ClearPlay finally got its green light when the Family Movie Act portion of the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act — which exempts companies who do what they do from "trademark infringement" — was formally passed into law, after being forwarded to the White House by Congress, by a stroke of the president's pen.
"The tank lost this time," says a relieved Matt Jarman.
In the nondescript offices bunkered between the freeway and the House of Hose, the pace now should only quicken. The Jarman brothers readily acknowledge this. "It's fair to say that up till now this has been a labor of love," says Matt.
But now, with a presidential stamp of approval?
"It's exciting," says Matt, "we expect a lot of things are going to happen rather quickly. I mean, it wasn't a surprise that the president signed the bill (after approval by the House and Senate), but when he really did it, it sunk in. It's real. We may have never expected it to happen, but it has."
And there are no filters that can change that.
Lee Benson's column runs Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527.