Court Rules Against Sanitizing Films

AP ^ | Saturday July 8, 9:52 pm

[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.

[durasell]

Now there is a movement to attack DVR technology by taking away the ability of the viewer to fast forward through commercials!!!



That was the real issue in Sony v. Universal. The lawsuit was spurred by an adertisement in a magazine that read, "Watch Columbo Without Commercials" or something like that. Again, Universal got its butt kicked.

But again, law is boring. Hating Hollywood is fun.

I say the problem with Hollywood is the actors. Decadent imbeciles who can't find a "real job." We should arrange to fire all the actors and replace them with responsible people...

[Jotmo]

I've been asking this also, and no one will answer me either.

[OKIEDOC]

linda_22003 wrote:
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.


Comment:

Lets see I thought copyrights were on the same level as property rights in most states.

If I sell my ranch and I did a few years ago, does that give me the right to tell the new owner what changes he can make to my former piece of property.

You say emotional:

Do you believe my comments were emotional.

No one in their right mind would stick up for the depravity currently coming out of Hollywood.

Unless of course they were afraid that it might someday deprive them of a quickie porno fix.

The Constitution never said that minorities shall overrule the better judgment of of norms set by the majority.

You can defend or say what ever you want about Hollywood's rights but the truth is these godless depraved pedophilia @$$holes by their smug elitists actions are hurting the children of this great country.

I equate these porno thugs to the terrorists of 9-11.

The only thing I might do for one of these perverts is pi$$ on their grave as they burn in hell.

Thats just my lowly opinion linda_22003.

[linda_22003]

Permissions are involved. In this case, they were lacking.

[Jotmo]

Well if we'd all quit bumping to the top by answering the same questions over and over, it might just die.

Oops. I just did it again.

[durasell]

HOLLYWOOD MUST BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR PAULY SHORE AND ROB SCHNEIDER MOVIES!

[puroresu]

####If I sell my ranch and I did a few years ago, does that give me the right to tell the new owner what changes he can make to my former piece of property.####

If it's in the contract, it does. If you sell me a ranch, and the contract says (for example) that I can't build a new barn on the property, and I sign that contract, then I can't build a new barn on that property after I take possession of it.

Normally, of course, there aren't provisions such as that in a contract for physical property.

[linda_22003]

It's been done; the Bible has been "Bowdlerized" (a useful word to look up), along with Shakespeare. Both are long since out of copyright, if in fact they had ever been under it. Intellectual property rights were a concept first introduced in the 19th century, iirc.

[linda_22003]

Like all but about five minutes of "Chinatown".

[durasell]

The analogy doesn't work because they're not actually selling the property. They are selling the limited rights to the property. More like a rental. If you rent your ranch to someone, they're not allowed to knock down the barn and build a disco.

That said:

SOMEBODY MUST PAY FOR THE FACT THAT I ACTUALLY KNOW WHO JENNIFER ANNISTON IS!

[durasell]

Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown

[Central Scrutiniser]

You refuse to understand this issue, you are thinking with emotions and bringing in all sorts of crap because you see it as a liberal vs conservative issue. It isn't. Copyrights exist to protect the owners and creators of their goods.

Cut all the emotional crap you are throwing and all the shoulda coulda woulda garbage and try to understand, you don't alter someone else's work without their permission.

No one is forcing any filth on you, you just want people to pass laws to protect you from yourself. Are you so weak that you need that?

Don't want to see the "filth?"

Don't watch it

It sure beats your endless bitching and moaning.

[linda_22003]

You can have your opinion, as long as you don't expect the law to change to conform to it.

Under some circumstances, property can be sold with covenants that restrict how it is used and how it appears. Near my home is a property that was built for one of Washington's foremen, on part of the Washington estate. There used to be four or five of these houses in Fairfax County, and now there is only one left.

The owner sold his property a few years ago to a builder, who was going to tear down the original house (from the 1700s) and section the property for about 8 or 10 McMansions. The county stepped in and stopped this, and now the property is for sale specifically to someone who will preserve the house and grounds, which possibly have the oldest living boxwoods in the commonwealth of Virginia.

So yes, that can be done.

[linda_22003]

That's the pesky thing about the law, isn't it? It doesn't apply only to people or ideas you happen to like. Rather a nuisance, I know. :)

[durasell]

FYI:

The original ending to Chinatown was changed prior to release over screenwriter Bob Towne's objections. In the original ending the car drives away. The camera follows the car and stops as it passes a grove of orange trees. The picture morphs into an empty field and then into suburban houses.

[OmahaFields]

First copyright law: Only the Church shall posses printing presses.

[OKIEDOC]

albyjimc2 wrote:
Maybe when I get children I can monitor what they watch, which is what parents are for. I can teach them what respect and dignity is so they don't eat up the garbage that comes from Hollywood. That's a parents job.

People love to say, "wait until you have children and you'll understand." Freedom of expression in America is a wonderful thing, and if you think laws should be broken because you cannot control what your kids watch, I am sorry to say this, but that is not Hollywood's fault, it's your own.


COMMENT on point 1:

No one said a person without children could not comment on how to raise a child.

However, I cringe when self-anointed experts say how parents should do this and that when raising a child.

You can teach them all the respect and dignity available to humans but you cannot predict the outcome of what constant exposure of deviant depravity out of a parent’s protective zone will do in their future lives.

Your response reminds me of something I might expect to read or heard from an individual with a Hollywood type mentality such as Madonna.

This is a great country because we have always lived by a modicum of norms that protected our children.

Something besides liberal godlessness has to be driving these cockroach pedophiles out from under their rocks to murder and rape our children.

COMMENT on point 2:

Just as I am trying to be a Bull Feces (BS) rejecter of your parent child comments, you still have not proved to me how buying a movie containing garbage and cleaning it up is breaking the law.

Let us see, I sold my ranch and the new owner bulldozed the prized rock garden to build a new home.

My son sold his prized restored 55 Chevy and the new owner put on different god-awful bland hubcaps.

Dose this new ruling by the judge now give me and my son the validity to take these people to court for violating our so called artistic rights?

When a person sells property I believe they have given up or sold their rights to oversee changes to that sold item.

Does this also mean that now I can have some power over the new owners as to what, when and how they can sell our former property?

Added Comment:

U.S. District Judge Richard P. Matsch as many will remember was the chief judge in the Oklahoma City bombing case and was the one who would not allow evidence implicating Arab involvement in the bombing.


By the way, parents should not have to have a constant security watch 24/7 for the garbage being heaped on their children by irresponsible immoral adults.

I take the assault from Hollywood and other so-called liberal elements on my children the same as if some terrorist was trying to destroy my home.

Here in Southern California we have lists of pedophiles and sexual deviates that have or may want to hurt our children.

These people in Hollywood are on about the same level as the lowest pervert on earth.

Personally, I could care less if most of these creeps have their artistic values violated if it means the safety and mental stability of my child.

If the judges’ ruling is correct then it opens the door for lots of lawsuits.

For instance the ignorant pro basketball player who had a wreck while driving his Lincoln Navigator.

This immoral millionaire deviant was masturbating while watching a pornographic movie as he lost control of his vehicle.

Can the producer, writer and distributor of the pornographic movie now be sued since the movie was directly responsible for the wreck?

[OKIEDOC]

OK that said, then we can intervene into the perversion by Hollywood and it's immoral writers.

I would suggest spraying these cockroaches with Raid to start.

[longtermmemmory]

They are selling a service, you get the ORIGINAL disk and an edited CD.

This is no different than hiring someone to come to your house and edit the tape for you.

While it may "artistically" offend the sensibilities of the studio, they DO get paid for their work as they origially made it.

Did they argue this decreases the value of their "airplane" edited product?

[durasell]

They're writers in Hollywood. Haven't they suffered enough?