Posted on 07/08/2006 9:24:52 PM PDT by BenLurkin
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Sanitizing movies on DVD or VHS tape violates federal copyright laws, and several companies that scrub films must turn over their inventory to Hollywood studios, an appeals judge ruled.
Editing movies to delete objectionable language, sex and violence is an "illegitimate business" that hurts Hollywood studios and directors who own the movie rights, said U.S. District Judge Richard P. Matsch in a decision released Thursday in Denver.
"Their (studios and directors) objective ... is to stop the infringement because of its irreparable injury to the creative artistic expression in the copyrighted movies," the judge wrote. "There is a public interest in providing such protection."
Matsch ordered the companies named in the suit, including CleanFlicks, Play It Clean Video and CleanFilms, to stop "producing, manufacturing, creating" and renting edited movies. The businesses also must turn over their inventory to the movie studios within five days of the ruling.
"We're disappointed," CleanFlicks chief executive Ray Lines said. "This is a typical case of David vs. Goliath, but in this case, Hollywood rewrote the ending. We're going to continue to fight."
CleanFlicks produces and distributes sanitized copies of Hollywood films on DVD by burning edited versions of movies onto blank discs. The scrubbed films are sold over the Internet and to video stores.
As many as 90 video stores nationwide -- about half of them in Utah -- purchase movies from CleanFlicks, Lines said. It's unclear how the ruling may effect those stores.
The controversy began in 1998 when the owners of Sunrise Family Video began deleting scenes from "Titanic" that showed a naked Kate Winselt.
The scrubbing caused an uproar in Hollywood, resulting in several lawsuits and countersuits.
Directors can feel vindicated by the ruling, said Michael Apted, president of the Director's Guild of America.
"Audiences can now be assured that the films they buy or rent are the vision of the filmmakers who made them and not the arbitrary choices of a third-party editor," he said.
Exactly, its the same as if someone published a book and someone decided to republish it but editing it and changing its words around.
Its copyright law and the creators of the film are the ones that own the rights to how it gets shown, open and shut case.
[i]I will ask this question though, isn't it against the law to make a copy of anything the is copyrighted. Even if you burn a copy of your own CD to listen to in your car so the original doesn't get torn up, isn't that against the law?[/i]
You are allowed to make one copy for archival purposes. Your example would be allowed under current copyright laws.
You are also allowed to alter you personal copy of anything for your own personal use.
Then you would decide to buy or not buy the movie from the "cleaners". If you wanted the phrase "speeding cars" in the movie, you don't buy. How on earth can that be a problem?
The director also typically has no say over the pan-and-scan process. It's just some hack at the telecine, making his own decisions as to what gets cut and what stays. I don't remember the movie, but there is one well-known example where two people are having a conversation, facing each other, on opposite sides of the frame. Whoever pan-and-scanned it couldn't find a good way to keep them both in the frame, so all that is shown are their noses, having a conversation.
WOW,, you're kidding right??
If a film, book painting or whatever is too offensive,, DON'T BUY IT OR WATCH IT. Simple.
But if you take an artistic creation and butcher it to suit your world view, you have changed it. That is misrepresentaion, pure and simple.
So if I send this company a Michael Moore film and they completey conservatize it, so a pair of ninnies can watch it, is it still a Michael Moore film? Can it still be attributed to him? Can we still chastize him for making fiction, calling it reality, slandering the masses, and exposing those who agree with him? Or do we watch the sanitized copy and say, "oh, that Michael Moore, he's such a funny guy, I'd like to shake his hand", when in reality he a complete bullcrap artist and his continued creative style of films earns him social contempt as it should and winds up forcing him to forget any future attempt at film making. MM deserves our contempt, why sanitize his work and keep him safe from world scorn?
Communist governments do this.
They're wrong and this company is wrong and should be sued out of business.
If you want to be protected from the smut, don't watch the film or read the book or look at the painting.
The suit is dumb. Not only is it dumb, it's extraordinarily dumb. The company sanitizing films filled a need. Rather than say, "Hey, here's a profit opportunity!" the film company went for the lawyers.
Basically, the problem is solved with a software patch on the DVD and a cheap feature on the player.
How many more DVDs would they sell if a PG-13 and R version were available on the same disc?
I don't have the equipment to do that. Several of tese companies started out when the customer would send in the original and they would use their equipment to make the requested cuts and would then send back the original with the edits. All they have done is streamline the process and make the original purchase themselves. Can they revert to the old business model and edit a copy I send them now?
>Because the artist approves the bleep of their song, otherwise it would not get played on the radio and they would not get their royalty. It's probably part of the standard BMI language.
So if these companies only sold versions of movies that have already been on network TV or on airlines with "approved" cuts then it would be OK?
Fills a need????
You can't honestly think anything that requires sanitizing needs viewing? If you do, you're giving a pass to the smut, the producer and financier for the selfish sake of your own enjoyment and you're tricking the very market place conservatives rely on to meter that market.
Except that, you didn't address me before.
In your 2nd post, you start out: "...IN THE COPYRIGHTED MOVIES" Does it make sense now? I am getting rather irritated arguing a case that is blatantly right yet people blah blah blah.
And I'M the one with a problem?
Night
Have a nice day.
Arrogance to some is simply someone who knows whereof they speak, and who tries to explain a simple truth to those who do not. Strategorist has been pretty straightforward on this thread, and he's exactly right. It's not something that is debatable, no matter how distasteful you find Hollyweird films these days. It's a matter of property rights. Films, books and songs are a form of property. When you create a work, it belongs to you. You are entitled by our laws to control that work. It's how our system works. You may not like that, but that's the plain fact. And our system works pretty well, generating the best the world has ever seen in creative endeavors, as well as in technological pursuits.
>>Why is that different?
>1) the radio stations aren't selling the songs; B) it's done with the permission of the record labels (which usually do the radio edits themselves) and III) deleting foul language is required by federal law.
They are selling them! You can purchase "Radio Disney" versions of pop songs that are the same versions heard on Radio Disney stations with the edits included. Check out song number 4 at this link:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0002M5T2A?v=glance
You can't honestly think anything that requires sanitizing needs viewing?
I meant fills a need in the marketplace. Obviously the company wasn't sanitizing the films for kicks. They were making money off the process.
No film "needs" viewing. No book "needs" reading. And no song "needs" to be heard. But we still watch movies, read books and listen to music.
That said, there are many movies worth watching that may offend some folks. For the easily offended, why not provide them with an option?
They can claim they are filling a need, but the fact is, its not their property to alter, they do not have the rights to do that, and especially to profit off of someone else's work. That is why there are copyright laws. If I wrote a book or directed a film, its mine, and it will be in the format I decide its going to be in, not anyone else.
I don't care how you feel about this, its a property argument. The films are not in the public domain, they are owned by someone and they decide what happens to it.
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