[TChris]

You are, certainly, with your individual copy. What these companies did was to alter content without the permission of the copyright holder, for resale purposes. Paying for a copy of the original doesn't cover the businesses in this case, since permission was never obtained.

If the two actions of:

1. Buying a legal copy of a movie
2. Editing that copy for content, or paying a business to do it for you

...are both legal, then why is it a violation of copyright law to perform both actions at the same time, and with the same company?

[linda_22003]

Because by doing it en masse, as a business venture, they are way beyond the "fair use" coverage in copyright law. If they had partnered with the studios to do this, they would have been fine, but they went ahead even after permission was denied.

[discostu]

Because there's a difference between a license to distribute and a license to edit. If these guys openly bought to re-distribute (legal distribution license) then they were never considered the final owners, being as they weren't the final owners they had no legal right to edit because within the definitions of copyright law they never owned the movie, they merely held them waiting for someone else to pay them for it.

Also notice how many of the plantiffs rarely have their movies shown on broadcast TV or airplanes. Many directors put clauses in their contract not allowing external editors of their final product, so in order for the editing necessary for TV and airlines to happen they themselves would have to agree to do the editing or waive that clause. This would also put the editing companies in contract violation over and above copyright issues.