Posted on 07/10/2006 8:14:23 AM PDT by 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....
(Excerpt) Read more at cbc.ca ...
You are wrong in that assumption.
Hollywood riled up over ClearPlayIt no longer matters anyway as Congress passed a law legalizing ClearPlay's technology. But the studio's were opposed to it (and still are), market share be damned)....
Studios and filmmakers are stunned that someone not involved in the creative process could technologically chip away at their work — and make money at it. So lawsuits aiming to get the processes deemed illegal are underway.
Ha Ha! I knew I was right.
This is the key paragraph:
But those editing decisions are made by the movie studios, if not by the directors themselves. Not by a handful of people in Utah..
The copyright holder want to retain control of the material. This is the most basic aspect of business sense. If you own something, you don't let control of it slip away.
Already done. My understanding is that they're not impacted by this ruling, because the "editing" occurs entirely on the customer's DVD player.
I have to admit that if I were a movie producer and spent a lot of time and energy to make a movie just the way I envisioned it, it would bother me to see others making money off of an edited, "sanitized" version of my movie. I don't know if there is any legal recourse, but I can certainly understand why a producer would have a problem with it.
I know it was a side story, but it was pointless because it has nothing to do with the issue at hand other than attempting to obscure the debate.
"I know it was a side story, but it was pointless because it has nothing to do with the issue at hand other than attempting to obscure the debate."
Not really. Someone mentioned the thing about defacing a book, and wondered if that would be a copyright violation. I explained why it would not, then offered a humorous account of a situation where defacing books would be a violation of some law.
This thread is long, and is primarily talking about situations that have nothing to do with the particular court case in the original posting. It's about to end. A humorous, related story seemed to be apropos. Your opinion may differ, but that's what makes discussions fun.
It's hard to say that it violates copyright, though, since it does not change content, only the way content is viewed. I can watch any movie with the sound completely off and music playing in the background, if I want to - it does not change what's on the DVD.
I'm not arguing with you, so I'm not using anything to "win an argument". I didn't write the laws, just trying to help explain them.
It actually is about profit, they're just thinking long term. Hollywood and others are trying to redefine copyright from a limited right to copy and redistribute into an unlimited right to control usage. Anything that offers customer choice interferes with this, and must be opposed so that they can achieve their utopia of pay-per-view everything, unavoidable ads, and no customer ownership of anything.
Yes, you got it.
And if that's the case, why can't the company buy a bunch of dvds and make edits like they are doing.
Precisely. Why can't the make the exact same edits the TV versions have already made (in accordance with the "artistic vision" of the director and studio and meeting their approval) and make those edits in advance for me to purchase?
The problem I have is that I might see a movie on TV, like it, and deem it appropriate for inclusion in my home video library. Then when I get it, it is an entirely different movie that is unsuitable for viewing by my family -- it's not the one I saw on TV. It's a sort of "bait and switch" tactic where they have lured me into purchasing a product that I thought was acceptable then switched it with another wholly unsuitable version.
The DVD is being altered by the coding, which the user doesn't see.
The problem with this for the movie studios is that, if legal, there's nothing to keep an airline or television station or foreign market from buying the device and then purchasing the lower cost rights to show the full movie.
It's still about profit. One of the primary concerns with the studio heads is the concept of ownership (the concept of ownership is the key to all studio profits, they can't make any money on anything if people don't think they own it), they want as much of that to lie with them as possible, anything that could possibly by any application of thought weaken the concept of ownership they're against. Some people on this thread have already used the existence of that technology and the law that protected that technology to criticize this court decision. Get enough SCOTUS justices who agree with that line of thinking (which I believe is in error, but we all have SCOTUS decisions we think were patently stupid) and this decision gets reversed, which would severely weaken their ownership, and thus negatively impact their profits.
Then, of course, there are the non-studio heads, who think of themselves as "artists" and get their panties in a bunch whenever anybody tries to change anything about their "masterpiece".
Chris, you're argument is resting on the idea that it is somehow "Legal" to copy a VHS tape, and therefore, under your argument it should be OK to do the same to a DVD.
First, that argument is bad. Copying either is against the law. Just because it's easier to do it with a VHS, doesn't mitigate that.
You are not allowed to sell the services of backing up, ripping, editing, and then re-authoring, which is what this thread is about. Because let's be honest here, the "companies" that are doing this aren't just making a "personal backup" are they?
As someone in this Industry, I can tell you, there's a whole lot more that goes into creating a Pro Release DVD title than simply using some off the shelf "Authoring" software, and doing some Drag and Drop DVD assembly. It can take huge ammount of time and effort to create an A-Title release. DVD Authors, Graphics artists, Motion Graphics artists, Compressionists, Technical managers, and Quality Control people put a lot of work into creating the DVD.
What the "companies" in question were doing undoes all that work, and the result is substandard, badly compressed, poorly edited, and woefully re-authored, regurgitated crap. Someone would be just as well to wait the extra couple of months and watch the moving Pan and Scanned on Netowrk TV, if they are that anxious to see the movie in a form that doesn't offend them.
There is a process for doing "sanitised" Parental Controls, but the results are marginal at best, and most Producers won't use it because of those poor results, and substancial costs involved in adding that "feature".
However, that being said, it needs to be done at the time of the original authoring, and NOT by some hack, working out of his home computer, using ripped material, with substandard equipment and software, for it to be legal.
I understand. I was just saying that this case seems to be based on meaningless legal distinctions, and the solution (this machine) then turns the legal distinction on its head. That is exactly what happens when you have laws that are not logical--they can be beat with loopholes. The IRS Code is full of them.
Then they should not allow sales of their DVDs and only rent them like Xerox used to do with their copiers. No sales allowed.
What is amusing about these discussions is the fact that those who would argue to the death for the concept of ownership for a piece of real estate don't accord the same rights to a piece of intellectual property.
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