Poking fun at Hollywood--with puppets

A hotly debated proposal by Hollywood movie studios became an arts-and-crafts activity at Public Knowledge's holiday party this week.

Public Knowledge, the public interest group, has been lobbying hard at the Federal Communications Commission against a Hollywood proposal that would let consumers order just-released movies from their living room TV set, Pay-Per-View style. 

Here's some background on the issue: The Motion Picture Association of America, which represents studios including Paramount and Disney, has asked the FCC to grant it permission to turn off certain outputs on consumer's TVs while they are watching an on-demand movie via their cable service. The technology is known as "Selectable Output Control," or SOC for short.

MPAA says the technology will help clamp down on piracy. Public Knowledge, the most vocal opponent, says it could leave out millions of households who will have to upgrade their TVs to take advantage of the service. More broadly, Public Knowledge says the studios shouldn't have that much control over how consumers watch movies.

So to poke fun at the MPAA, Public Knowledge invited holiday party guests to make "SOC Puppets," using video connector cables as arms. Seven puppets were made, which will be the stars of a video on the issue.

They'll then be put up for auction on Ebay.

"We're trying to have some fun around here," said Public Knowledge communications director Art Brodsky.

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