Axing Sex, Swearing From Films Violates Copyright: Court

CBC ^

[steve-b]

Deleting swearing, sex and violence from films on DVD or VHS violates copyright laws, a U.S. judge has ruled in a decision that could end controversial sanitizing done for some video-rental chains, cable services and the internet.

The ruling stemmed from a lawsuit brought by 16 U.S. directors — including Steven Spielberg, Robert Redford and Martin Scorsese — against three Utah-based companies that "scrub" films.

Judge Richard P. Matsch decreed on Thursday in Denver, Colo., that sanitizing movies to delete content that may offend some people is an "illegitimate business."

The judge also praised the motives of the Hollywood studios and directors behind the suit, ordering the companies that provide the service to hand over their inventories....

[MineralMan]

"Right but the idea put forth was you send your legal copy of a DVD to someone else to modify for you. Since they don't own that legal copy they would have to take steps to ensure they do not maintain a copy of the DVD. Basically the company would have to make it as if you were making it yourself, ie all copies of the original would either have to be destroyed or given back to you."

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But that was not the situation before this court, was it?
Besides all that, I doubt very much that anyone would be willing to pay the cost of having this done on a custom basis. If the duplicator, on the other hand, was reproducing a bowdlerized copy from a master it had previously created, then it would be making unauthorized copies.

The economics of re-editing each video sent in just don't work out, given the time involved in that process.

Now, the idea of the DVD player that would read a database and automatically skip certain portions of a film is just fine under the copyright laws. Indeed, the database itself could be protected by copyright, since it would be an original work.

That seems to be the way to go with this, plus it would be loads cheaper, and the data could be downloaded very quickly from some service.

Since you can't actually alter a commercial DVD without making a copy of it, I think the third-party thing isn't going to hold up.

[Hendrix]

That is the best post I have seen you post yet. I suspected that it was not economically feasible to alter a DVD, but I left that out of my arguments.

[Stone Mountain]

. I thought once I bought a legal copy of a movie, I was free to play and edit it as I wish. It seems I am not.

You are. You just can't distribute the edited copies. You can do what you want for personal use.

[MineralMan]

"I would ague that as a practical matter, it should not matter whether the buyer buys the product and then pays a business to sanitize it versus just having the service put in before it is bought. There is no real distinction from a practical standpoint. There may be the legal distinction, but the legal distinction is moot when as a practical matter it can be done the same way (I could buy the DVD and immediately ask the seller to alter it for me)."

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Here's the problem: The modifier of the DVD has to either modify and edit a copy each time the customer requests it (that might be legal) or he has to create a modified master to use in making duplicates. The master, itself, would be an illegal copy, because it is not for the personal use of the owner.

The cost of individually editing each copy would be prohibitive, but the duplicator could not legally create a master copy to be used in making those duplicates for a fee, since that would not be personal use.

Legal nitpicking, certainly, but that's the nature of the law.

[discostu]

Right, we're on a tangent discussion, related to but not directly involved in the court case in question.

Actually it probably wouldn't be too hard. You could create editing software to do the grunt work for you, and hook it up to a database that would have all your edits pre-programmed for movies you've already figured out what to edit. So there'd be a large labor overhead the first time movie X came in, but every time after that it would be easy. Then it would burn a copy of the modified movie, delete all temp files, and send both the original and the sanitized burn back to the user. Could probably do the whole thing with less than 1 man hour for any movie in the database, of course you're probably talking 5 or 6 man hours (or days for one of those Andy Warhol 10 hour movies) for every movie new to the DB.

The third party would have to make sure their methods are REALLY clean, temp files deleted after the copy is made, temp files unavailable to any person or process other than the copying program while the editing is being done, and a massive audit trail to prove it all. Might not be cost effective, but the tangent discussion was really about the legality, not the intelligence.

[Stone Mountain]

Is it legal or is it not legal to edit one's own copy in one's own house for one's own personal use?

My understanding is that it's legal as long as that person doesn't try to distribute it. You can do what you want to your own copy of a movie, just like you can underline and strike out passages in a book you own. But you can't distribute that book or movie that you altered.

[Hendrix]

I agree. However, I think there should be a way for parents to get sanitized DVDs without the permission of Hollywood. There should be a way to get there. Another judge may have got there with my argument that there is no distinction between having a buyer take a DVD to an editor (even if it is costly) versus just buying it already added to the DVD with the knowledge of the buyer that it was going to be added before the purchase. As long as each original is paid for in full, there should be no distinction for using a master to make sanitized copies for resell and destroying each original.

[MineralMan]

What you propose is possible, but much more money could be made by creating the software, creating the database of edits and selling the database to users, to let them view or create a copy for themselves.

I expect such technology to be built into DVD players before long. You'd sign up for a service, download data for movies you wanted to butcher up, and everything would be automatic after that. Easy enough to create, certainly, and you'd be able to license the software to the DVD makers.

Oh, wait....betcha Sony is already working on such a thing in-house, so it's likely that all of our budding entrepreneur's efforts would go to waste.

If it's a good enough idea, it's already in the works, I'd think.

[MineralMan]

"As long as each original is paid for in full, there should be no distinction for using a master to make sanitized copies for resell and destroying each original.

"

The trouble comes from the third party making and using an edited copy of the movie to make copies for customers, then charging them for the service. His edited master copy is illegal on its face, under current laws.

Copyright controls the process of making copies. That's what it controls. The commercial bowdlerizer's copy of the edited movie is simply illegal.

[discostu]

Sure, but again the discussion was just the legality. Somebody asked if it would be legal and I said "yes if...", that's all I was discussing. I'm not even interested in such a service as a customer, both my parents were Marines, there's very little language Hollywood can present that bothers me, and if there's something else in a movie that bothers me I just don't want to see it, not interested in a scrubbed version. Actually there was at least one company last year that was marketing a thing for use with high end DVD players that would skip offending chapters and mute offending dialog on the fly. As DVD players get more controllable that will probably expand.

[Stone Mountain]

However, if someone wants to add something to a Bambi movie and the buyer wants it put in, I don't see a problem with that.

Really? This is part of the heart of copyright law. If you don't see a problem with this, I can see why you wouldn't have problems with outside sources "sanitizing" movies and distributing them.

[TChris]

Let me ask you, what do you know about the DVD Authoring process? Seriously.

I have authored several. At times, up to one a night. You?

Do you honestly think what these people are doing is are just simply editing? Do you really understand what all needs to happen to do this "simple editing"?

Yes, and yes. The technology required to perform the editing is really beside the point, if the editing itself is legal.

Because the Courts found that such software (used to make those "personal back-ups" circumvents the Copy Protections to make the copies.

Yeah. It was this idea to which I was referring when writing about the new territory created by copy-protected DVDs. When the actual act of editing a legal copy of some material for personal use is legal, why is the act of making such legal editing possible by cracking the copy protection then illegal? This is a messed up segment of copyright law, IMO.

Copyright should apply equally regardless of the particular kind of material at issue. If editing my copy of Basic Economics, by tearing out pages or blacking out phrases, is legal, then similar editorial activity must be legal for the audio recordings, photographs, paintings, video tapes or DVDs that I own. Legally, the technology involved is entirely beside the point, since copyright law should be technology neutral.

How about this: Is it illegal for me to buy the VHS version of a movie, encode it to MPEG, edit the MPEG stream and author my own DVD for personal use? I would argue that it is. And if it is, then doing the same to one of my DVDs, with the necessary technological actions, should likewise be legal.

As a footnote, it seems to me that the studios, producers and directors are aiming their ire at the wrong targets on this. These customers all bought a copy of the movie. They generated revenue for the studios. They aren't pirating. The real problem for the studios is the culture that entirely ignores copyright and pirates material in bulk. Asia and other regions do this in a big way. Why get so uptight about a few stores in Utah where people want to spend their money with you, but not get the vulgarity? Why tell them, "No, we don't want your money. You have to take our offensive content, or don't buy our stuff." It's rather bizarre to me.

[Loyal Buckeye]

I have come to the conclusion that Hollywood film makers are unable to produce quality films, rather than their choosing not to do so.

[Hendrix]

I think a judge could have easily found that as long as the creator of the DVD is paid in full and no additional DVDs are being sold to cheat the creator out of his money, then the process of using a master DVD like the one in the case is not against the law because there are no monetary damages to the creator and because the buyer could have taken his purchased DVD to the same company to sanitize it, despite the fact that it would be expensive to do so. The fact is the creator is not damaged by this process because, again, this can be done by the buyer and the creator did in fact get paid in full. That is what makes this case wrong IMO--there are no damages. The creator cannot claim that his artistic is damaged because the buyer can do that anyway.

[Hendrix]

"Really? This is part of the heart of copyright law. If you don't see a problem with this, I can see why you wouldn't have problems with outside sources "sanitizing" movies and distributing them."

Wrong. I can buy a DVD and alter it for my own use in any manner I like and it does not violate any law. I can break it into if I like. If I want to pay someone to do that for me, that should be legal as well.

[Stone Mountain]

The creator cannot claim that his artistic is damaged because the buyer can do that anyway.

I disagree with this. If the altered work isn't distributed, then his art isn't compromised. If it is distributed, I understand why a producer wouldn't want inferior copies of his movies floating around out there.

[Stone Mountain]

Wrong. I can buy a DVD and alter it for my own use in any manner I like and it does not violate any law. I can break it into if I like. If I want to pay someone to do that for me, that should be legal as well.

Because the law distinguishes between doing something to one's one property and not distributing it, and doing something to one's property and distributing it. As MM mentioned above, if you want to sanitize your own movie, one at a time, through an editing service, that would be fine. But they can't alter a dvd, make copies of it and distribute it. It's a clear difference, at least to me.

[Hendrix]

"I disagree with this. If the altered work isn't distributed, then his art isn't compromised. If it is distributed, I understand why a producer wouldn't want inferior copies of his movies floating around out there."

It is not distributed. That is my point. Each buyer is paying a company to alter it for that buyer and that buyer alone. That is why the distinction has no merit. If a buyer can alter it himself and it is legal, and if the buyer can pay someone to alter it after the buyer buys it, there is no practical distinciton for buying it with the service already done to it.

[Lord_Baltar]

Chris? If you've Authored DVDs, on a Professional basis, then I can assume you've actually read those nifty little FBI and Interpol notice cards that we have to put on the from end.

Does it say it's OK to Rip the copy protection, copy the Video TS folders to your HD, Rip the Streams, re-edit the streams so you like it better, then reauthor and reburn the DVD?

Here, just in case,
http://www.voicesinc.org/blog/wpcontent/gallery/fbi_warning.jpg

I guess I missed your legal argument in that.

Again, the case under this Ruling has NOTHING to do with your argument about making personal back-ups of a DVD you bought.

If you are a professional DVD Author, I'm more than a little surprised that you would condone illegal duplication and illegal altering and distribution of DVDs

[Hendrix]

There is no practical difference. Think about it. If I can pay someone to alter my DVD that I have already purchased (end result is I get a DVD that I purchased that is sanitized) then I should be able to buy the DVD with that service already added to it (end result is that I get a DVD that I purchased that is sanitized). This is a case where the rules of law in this area do not make any logical sense because as a practical matter, there is no distinction.