Free Republic

Fourteen survivors and victims of the Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995 filed suit against Iraq in federal district court in Washington, D.C., last week, claiming that Iraqi officials gave money and training to Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols. McVeigh was executed last April. Nichols, convicted of manslaughter and given a life sentence in federal court, is awaiting trial in Oklahoma state court, where survivors are determined that he get a death sentence. Nearly a year after McVeigh's execution, the case remains controversial. Families of victims have accused the federal government of shoddy detective work, and some even have claimed...

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....

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - A federal judge in Colorado has handed the entertainment industry a big win in its protracted legal battle against a handful of small companies that offer sanitized versions of theatrical releases on DVD. The case encompasses two of Hollywood's biggest headaches these days: the culture wars and the disruptive influence of digital technologies. Senior U.S. District Court Judge Richard Matsch came down squarely on the side of the Directors Guild of America and the major studios in his ruling that the companies must immediately cease all production, sale and rentals of edited videos.