About VideoSkip

Is it legal?

Likely, you have heard that companies such as Clearplay and VidAngel, whose products are also used for filtering content from feature films, have gotten into a lot of legal trouble, mainly through lawsuits from the film industry. Back in 2005, Clearplay made special DVD players that would skip content based on a control file. They were sued, and the US Congress protected them by passing the Family Movie Act (17 U.S.C. 110(11)) which establishes that skipping content is legal so long as the video is not edited from its source, thus effectively making a different version of the video that could be marketed to viewers. VidAngel later made special edited DVDs, which the courts agreed were not in compliance with the Family Movie Act. Today, both companies offer a pretty similar service involving movies from Amazon servers that are skipped very much the same way VideoSkip does it. But they do charge a subscription fee. Clearplay works on computers and special DVD/BluRay players, VidAngel on mobile devices.

VideoSkip is unlikely to run into legal trouble because:
  1. It works by skipping as the video plays, without altering the source in any way. This is the way the other products work today, which has been confirmed to comply with the Movie Family Act. The film industry is leaving them alone, too.
  2. It charges no fees, which further puts it in compliance with the law (the other services market their products for profit).
  3. Skip files are made by individual users, who post them freely. This activity is protected as Freedom of Speech almost everywhere in the world. Users are free to use whatever version they like, or none at all.
  4. Even if loaded, VideoSkip does not interfere with playback in any way until a particular filter is enabled by the user.

Who are you and why are you doing this?

My name is Francisco Ruiz (a.k.a. PR Gomez, in my fiction projects). I am a native of Spain living in Chicago for many years now. I am a Christian (not LDS, though, as most people working on this kind of product seem to be), and it does bother me how many otherwise perfectly good films contain gratuitous sex or violence that don't add anything to the plot. It's just bad movie making, which studios fall into in order to earn an "R" rating and perhaps increase their income. I am a professor of Engineering and have other programming projects that you may want to check out, such as PassLok, very easy to use encryption for email and texting, and SynthPass, a free password manager and synthesizer.

How can I help?

VideoSkip is a community effort, and there are many ways you can help:
  1. Report bugs on the GitHub page, so we can improve VideoSkip.
  2. Make translations of the interface to a language you know. The competing apps kill subtitles, which makes it hard to filter videos in non-English speaking countries.
  3. Make skip files. We need editors who can specialize on edits for adults, teens, or children.
  4. You can always pass the word. Remember, VideoSkip is free and community-driven.