SALT LAKE CITY, Dec. 14, 2002 — ClearPlay, which provides family-oriented software filters for watching movies, has issued the following response to legal claims filed yesterday by several of the biggest and most powerful Hollywood motion picture studios. With the filings, the studios joined the Directors Guild of America in attempting to block consumers from using technology to filter graphic violence, profanity or explicit sex from DVD movies.

"This is Hollywood hypocrisy at its worst," said Bill Aho, CEO of ClearPlay Inc. "Given their dismal track record, the studios should be volunteering to help families, not trying to take away the rights of parents."

"Two years ago studio executives promised a presidential commission that they would quit marketing R-rated movies to children. The FTC reports are in — and they didn't do it. Then they had the audacity to publicly declare that instead of regulation, the industry needed better tools to help parents. But now, when effective tools like ClearPlay are introduced, they immediately go to court to try to get them banned.

"This is an industry that has spun out of control. They have absolutely failed in their commitments to American families to police themselves. They have broken their promises in favor of their own agenda. And they continue to cling to a rating system that allows harder and edgier content aimed at children and teens."

Many concerned individuals and organizations have expressed willingness to defend the rights of parents against the Hollywood legal onslaught.

"The movie industry says that it is the parents' responsibility to shelter their children from inappropriate content," said Joanne Cantor, Professor Emerita at the University of Wisconsin, who has published extensively on the harmful effects of media violence on children. "Yet they now want to interfere with parents' rights to protect their own children in their own homes."

On Friday, ClearPlay also brought its own claim that ClearPlay's activities are immune to the DGA challenges.

"ClearPlay intends to vigorously defend the claims asserted against it and to pursue its own request for a judicial declaration in the dispute," said Andrew Bridges of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, which is representing ClearPlay. Bridges has been involved in numerous high-profile technology copyright and trademark litigation, most recently representing Streamcast Networks and the Morpheus peer-to-peer file-sharing product.

Also assisting ClearPlay in the suit is the Rutherford Institute, a non-profit organization that is one of the nation's leading advocates of civil liberties and human rights.

"The copyright law was not intended to control what parents and their children see in their own home," said John W. Whitehead, noted constitutional attorney and president and founder of Rutherford Institute.

While named in the lawsuit along with 14 other defendants, ClearPlay's technology is different from companies that produce edited versions of movies. ClearPlay does not market or resell tapes or DVDs. Rather, the company's software is incorporated into DVD players and allows families to view a movie in the home while skipping or muting over graphic violence, profanity or explicit sex.

"This is a simple case of Hollywood's desire for control versus parents' rights," said Aho. "The movie industry wants to make sure that your family hears every F-word and sees every grisly death when you watch a movie in your home. We believe that controlling what your family sees and hears in the home is up to parents."

ClearPlay offers its DVD-ROM software to consumers currently via its Web site, http://www.clearplay.com, and through various affiliates doing business across the U.S. as well as internationally. The company offers filters for more than 300 popular movie titles.