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.
Comparing this situation which involves altering originals one by one to traditional copyright law involving derivative works, such as new plays featuring Disney characters without Disney's permission, is absurd.
So you are claiming that if I were to blot out the word "f*ck" from my copy of Ulysses by James Joyce and scribble in "make love" instead in the final chapter with Molly Bloom's stream of consciousness, then I am no longer legally allowed to resell it?
Only if you post the federal, state and local copyright infringement laws, in their entirety, that governs your proposal.
But it says they are producing and selling their own copies...that's not a minor problem.
But that is exactly what they did! They purchased at retail one copy of every movie they sold.
You just don't get it. How many times, in how many posts do you have to have the same question answered?
I'm sorry if you don't understand copyright laws, but it's been explained to you numerous times already.
Logically, that's what follows from such thinking. If one things that way, one must conclude that you don't really own that physical copy. (Of course, if they say it's OK to resell that altered copy at a garage sale, then that totally undermines their position even more.) It's absurd and if that in fact is the current state of things, they should be changed, pronto.
Never heard of that until and just looked it up. Looks like a much better alternative than having these businesses copy and sell discs they altered and gets the job done.
http://www.clearplay.com/
So you are saying that the TV version is produced without the permission of the copyright holder? How is that possible? For in the example of the Titanic for instance, since I am familiar with this one, the only cuts the company makes are the exact same ones in the TV release.
It's not a "copy"! It's an edit of the original purchase.
I don't get it. TV has been doing this since I was a kid, about a thousand years ago.
If they didn't much of the garbage Hollywood cranks out could never be shown on TV.
That's not what is going on. A company is taking another product, altering it, and then selling it. That's not comparable to what you just posted. You altered that book yourself after buying (hypothetically...). It was not copied and reprinted in that altered form and then sold. That's the difference.
If James Joyce intended the F-word to be in HIS work, that's not for you to decide what to put in it's place.
Because the TV release assuredly has the permission of the copyright holder. In fact, they probably have signed an exclusive rights contract for broadcasting it. The copyright holder doesn't have to grant rights to those they don't want to.
Sure, I agree and I agree there is a copyright notice. Again, there is nothing said in a license agreement that states, "modification or alteration of this item is illegal". Absolutely nothing. Simply put, it is not said because it is not illegal.
As for a violation, in order for that to occur, something has to happen to deprive the copyright owner of profits. If I buy a DVD, modify it, and then resell it, how is that depriving the copyright owner of profit? IF they planed in the future to create this type of derivative work, then yes I might be taking profits away. If they have no plans to do so, then it is none of their business. They can sue for damages and get exactly what they lost, nothing.
How is the availabilty of one of these edited versions telling you what is clean and what is not? You're still free to go into any movie rental store and get the unedited version.
Well, the response your going to get is that the TV versions were edited with the permission of the "creator". Of course, that only addresses the copyright side of the debate (and as I've stated elsewhere, I don't find it totally convincing) and not the dramatic bilge that Hollywood is spewing about "artistic vision". In reality, the director, screenwriters, etc., often don't make decisions such as whether it gets put on TV and with what pieces removed.(Spielberg does, but he's special.) Others at the studio do. Those guys are in it for pure profit, not for any vision. Thus, I think the artist's vision part of the argument is very weak. In the end, it's all about money, and since this company actually buys the vidoes before it changes them, the studios aren't losing any sales. (In fact, I expect they are gaining sales.)
Because those versions are not sold at retail by the studios in every instance. Some are, as in the Radio Disney example I listed earlier, whereas some are not. Just like you cannot go to Barnes and Noble and purchase a psychology textbook with the parts already underlined that Mrs. McScreechy the psychology teacher at Hicksville Community College, will cover in class, but you can purchase at the college bookstore her textbook that a previous student has underlined.
For each altered copy, an original one was purchased. This company isn't buying one copy, altering it, and then mass-selling tons of videos off of only one purchase. (IOW, it's not piracy.)
As for the sale aspect, do you think you'd have the right to resell that single book you bought (hypothetically) if you crossed out a few words with black marker?
Cable and TV networks pay for and buy rights to the movies (NBC for instance has access to the Universal Studios produceds films and already have permission from that studio), which for networks are edited at the movie studio for content and time constraints. This agreement in effect gives the TV stations permission to air the edited product.
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