It's not quite so obvious to me. The "first sale doctrine" protects the right to sell your personal copy of a copyrighted work (provided that you don't retain another copy for yourself, of course) -- this ruling would imply that the first sale doctrine is somehow negated if you (for example) removed unwanted pages from a book.
Presumably the difference here is that the defendants are removing specific portions determined in advance as a commercial service.
The media is probably getting this wrong.
If the part was renting the DVD's without a comercial rental agreement then we never get to the editing portion of the debate.
There is also the difference between renting and buying.
If I BUY the dvd and then edit it, it is MY DVD and I have done this for my own PERSONAL use. Thus if I take MY DVD and I have a service edit out the stuff of MY DVD then I think that is fair use.
Now rentals are a different story because they are akin to a movie theater.
I think the MSM is reporting the legal issues here wrong. (as always for the incompetent legal media) Artsy fartsy is irrelevant, the issue is the money derived from edited versions and fair use doctrine.
Hopefully this will be appealed.
Oh. Hmmm....
susie