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.
I haven't read the whole thread yet, but I've gotten this far, and this is the clearest post yet on the subject. Bravo.
They do not have a license to resell the items.
And they can't go by the "single movie" excuse when that is their whole business plan.
You can do anything you want to short of profiting off of your altered unlicensed work.
That doesn't matter. If The Detroit Free Press gets another company's permission to publish an article it owns, it doesn't mean that the Richmond Times-Dispatch can just go ahead and publish the same article. The Richmond paper has to get permission from the company that holds the copyright, just as the Detroit paper did. "Hey, these other people did it", is not a defense under copyright law.
In my job, I have to deal with copyright issues all the time, and it's amazing how little people understand about it - especially when they don't want to.
Whether you have children or not does not change the substance of copyright law. An earlier poster said that "emotional" arguments are what conservatives accuse liberals of making, and there you are, making a purely emotional argument.
Reader's Digest has agreements with publishers to produce condensed books. (I haven't even seen them in years; do they still do it?)
Classic literature is out of copyright.
What matters is whether PERMISSION was given by the copyright holder or not. Permission was never given in this case.
It's not the consumer's rights being infringed, it's the owner's.
"I just have to say this as well, for all the b****ing and complaining I hear about liberals tactics on this site, I hear the same tactics from so many people. The hypocrisy on this site is shocking and downright disappointing."
I agree, but I'm sure the mindset is that if you're "protecting your family" then your aim is more noble, and thus above the law. (What's the html code for rolling my eyes?)
Hardly. The moviemakers edit the movies, and then distribute them to the airlines and TV broadcasters. They don't just allow their stuff to be edited any which way by every tom dick or harry who wants to make a buck but doesn't like the original.
No. What you do with the movie in your own domicile is your own business. You can't alter the movie and sell it to someone else. The Founding Fathers believed in protecting patents and copyrights; we should too.
No, what he meant when he said it is an "arbitrary decision" is that it depends on the whims of whoever's doing the editing.
>>>>aichmophobia
I will remember that for the next article posting about banning knifes!
Thank you :)
That is the crux of the issue. Are you actually buying property like a DVD or a license? Copyright violation is not as cut and dried as it used to be, since there is a tax on media like tapes and DVDs paid to content providers to account for piracy.
Since the content providers make similar changes for others, artistic merit is not an issue. Copyright is. It is not the same as a physical theft no matter how much lawyers try to assert it.
As a quick exercise in monopoly and price fixing, compare the price of a music CD, and a movie. Then compare cost to make them. The industry itself fuels piracy.
DK
Another stupid decision by the courts.
Why would that bother you? If someone wants the original content it's not like they are being prevented from getting it.
Anyway, cutting scenes is a lot different than adding them. It's done in theater quite a bit. You often don't get the full Shakespeare.
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