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.
It's still done without the permission of the director and the company that produced the movie. That's the whole point.
Unhh, no. If someone is selling edited copies of a work without permission, THEY are "rewriting the ending". I've gotta agree with this ruling.
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.
That's laughable. Movies on airlines and television are scrubbed in a similar fashion. The only question left unanswered is why are studios pursuing this action?
Ok, so someone buys 1000 copies of the Passion of the Christ, adds in scenes of Christ uttering profanities and having sex, sells them, but destroys the originals.
Fine with you I presume.
Edited Airline and TV films have negotiated rights with the movie companies. It's pretty clear none of this Clean Films stuff was done with the slightest attempt to get any approval or permission or licensing rights.
Except the ruling says nothing about bootlegging. It says: "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."
The song on the radio is not being sold. A radio station is public and there are laws in place for decency. Buying a movie and watching it is a personal choice. You pay money for that DVD.
Same goes for edited compact discs at stores like Target. The musician puts those discs out and makes money off of wha sells. If Hollywood want to do the same, they should consider it. But editing a few words in a song is easy to do and still keep the song intact. But some movies, as we all know, could actually confuse people with a lot edited out of it.
I could see movies with a "PG" rating getting edited for the few swear words. Easy fix and the producers will still rake in money.
If I choose to not watch part of a movie, have I violated the moviemaker's rights?
Typical AP story. There is no stating whether these movies are pirated copies or not. The Hollywood statements seem to be that they are not so then the question is was there some agreement that now is being rescinded? Were they allowed to edit some movies and presumed they could continue with subsequent releases but were not authorized?
This article is void of very basic facts which I guess means I will have to do further research to fill in the gaps.
AP blows.
The decision is correct. That said, I really enjoy watching scrubbed movies on TV. They are hilarious. The best one--in Major League when Dorn says to Wild Thing "Strike THIS GUY out!", with "THIS GUY" in a clearly different voice than the rest of the sentence. Cracks me up every time I hear it, and I always utter it at baseball games.
I will try... my family doesn't rent movies because of the junk placed in it, but I would rent movies if the objectionable material was removed.. if the movie producers are getting paid, and the public given a choise to rent clean or dirty versions (and as far as I can tell both of these conditions are met)... I can't see where this hurts the movie producers in any way, as a matter of fact, the only thing that might be hurt would be those whos sole objective is to push smut in your face.
Other minor issues would be if the movies that these clean renters put out are more easily copied than regular disks. I have yet to find a disk I can't copy but perhaps for some others, the cleaned versions would be easier to copy.
The only good side I can find in this scenario, is perhaps the smut movies would be slightly less distributed and thus the producers of them would receive less money... I will stick with that hope and smugly laugh that these producers have now cut their own throats.
Perhaps the scrubber companies should take a hardware approach: sell a special DVD player that can apply the appropriate editing on the original disc on-the-fly.
I see. Thanks.
But again, the article does not say that or that that is the concern of the studios in these lawsuits. Now, if you are in the industry perhaps you know whether tyhe studios ever do license out the production of discs under other circumstances.
The article states: Editing movies to delete objectionable language, sex and violence is an "illegitimate business" that hurts Hollywood studios and directors . . . that hurts Hollywood studios and directors".
Who cares? Frankly their 'artistic expression' is all too often perverse and demented.
I think it's horrible. I was going to make a killing selling DVD's of just the parts they "scrubbed" out. :-)
I believe you just explained to me what I just explained to you. Read what you copied me one more time, and notice the four words after the underlined statement..
"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."
Ridiculous.
So why not negotiate rights with these companies? It doesn't make any sense. There is money to be made by everyone.
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