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Directors Guild of America is Fighting Edited Films
BoyPlankton writes "According to this article in the Salt Lake Tribune, film directors are gearing up to battle companies that are making a name for themselves selling/renting out edited films to consumers. The film directors claim that it's censorship and that it's morally, ethically, and legally wrong. The companies doing it claim that consumer rights trump the artists rights in this case, and that the artists don't have the moral ground to stand on because they already edit their films for T.V. and planes. Is this issue going to further erode our rights as a consumer, or will lawmakers take this opportunity to shore them up?"
So does this mean they'll take on Blockbuster for only renting the censored version of a film?
What I've seen a lot of people do for movies is to buy it as is, and then either have someone personally edit out portions they don't like or just have some sort of electronic filter that has a set of edit points stored in memory. I frankly don't see how content providers are going to be able to stop this.
Ah, there is a difference. I bought the Sony Playstation and if I mod it for my use only, Sony shouldn't care. I'm not trying to sell my "modded" Playstation, just play with. On the other hand, if I want to mod my movie for my own uses, and don't want to sell or rent it to others that should be fine too.
I agree wholeheartedly with the directors. They directed. It's no one elses right to re-direct, unless it was specifically covered in the contract. It reflects on the director when the film has been hacked to shreds and "reads" like a 3rd grader wrote it. shortened scenes and broken stories make them look like they blew it.
Anything you say will be held against you.
I think what the article is getting at is that the director may have something called "Moral Rights" over the work. Essentially this means that the item is a work of art that was produced for a fee and that the author of the work has the right to object to derogatory treatment of the work (i.e. censoring scenes).
The idea being that once a piece of art has been created the author has his/her name attached to it, and thus any treatments of the work done later that do not fit the artist's vision taints the artist's reputation.
I don't know how this works with film, because there are limitations to this when an artists produces work for an employer.. so it may be that the studio owns the moral rights, and I'm also not sure how this works in the US, but the UK and Canada both have moral rights. I'm not entirely sure as IANAL.
But.. here is a link for my karma-whore points... Moral Rights .
Film alternate scenes/dialog that conforms to the different levels of viewership.
That was one of the promises of DVD, we were supposed to have multiple ratings at our fingertips so the kids could see the PG version, the teens could see PG-13 and after the children were tucked in, the adults could see the R version.
That hasn't happened. They apparently don't see a market for it. Well if they don't and some consumers do, why the hell shouldn't they be allowed to pursue it?
All these whiney directors need to do is release an editted version themselves. Or are they going to prevent parents from fast-forwarding that one "bad scene" or muting an expletive-laden tirade?
I don't care how "important" the message in Schindler's List is. The scene where there is a nude woman in the German officer's bed is stimulating and sexual. If I had kids, I would want to skip that scene.
Here's what makes me want to puke on these directors...there are a lot of good good movies out there that had to add a single vile scene so they would be able to get the R rating their marketting folks said would sell better. Wasn't that compromising your artistic integrity?
- JoeShmoe
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-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
it is the directors who are censoring derivative works. According to my definition, censorship is a prohibition on distibution due to content or lack thereof. The 'companies' in this case aren't prohibiting anything...though what they are doing may have questionable standing in the current legal environment on account of effective copyright laws.
Legal issues aside, I understand the Directors feelings. Certainly when you get a competent director who make thoughtful stuff, like Stanley Kubrik or Dave Fincher or Quentin T., it's an insult to have people watching your movies under some sanitary cut. This isn't a plane or TV, where the audience will like the movie and then go to view the real thing. This is either really pathetic people not wanting to be offended, or parent's trying to show your art to children in a butchered manner. I think there is a difference, and I'd be damn pissed off if I took the time to create A Clockwork Orange, Se7en, or Fight Club, or Pulp Fiction, only to have people stipping it's essense out and changing the experience.
Again, it's not the same as the TV or plane version, because the goal here is not to open the movie for a wider audience (who can then go and see the real thing), it's a viewer asking someone else to protect them permenatly from the scenes that often make the movie.
But I guess I am sort of a sadist when it comes to these things, and prefer movies that make me uncomfortable and show raw humanity at it's best and worst. Also, note that if you think Stanley's, David's, or Quentin's work sucks, pick another director - the point still stands.
_sig_ is away
When Ted Turner colorized all those movie classics. Or the choice to release a movie in a foreign market dubbed (I'm talking about foreign films brought to the US and only released dubbed by the distributor).
The owner of the rights to the film can do with it what he choses. Simple.
Turner owned those reels of movies and he did what he wanted. Of course the public backlash stopped it in the end.
Similarly local distributors in a country count as the owner's proxy in those states. But the general dislike of dubbing has stopped them from releasing dubbed versions of Crouching Tiger and Life is Beautiful. Of course it has also limited the distribution of foreign movies (the assumption being people don't like dubbing but only film critics like to read subtitles so you can only release it in art houses).
Like an earlier poster said, anyone who doesn't own rights to a movie but works on it is just an employee.
A good example is Fox owning the original Star Wars. Lucas had to buy it back from them. Of course when he did he added in "Greedo shooting first."
Originally Fox could have stopped him from adding it. Later they couldn't. Neither could the LucasFilm employees or Harrison Ford.
Control of the final product is one of the benefits of being a big time director.
What is music when you despise all sound?
Interesing topic, but I would think it is moot. The DGA fought the same battle through the courts when the studios started colorizing and rereleasing black & white movies in the 80s. They lost the battle 100%. Hard to see how this is much different.
sPh
There is a large enough market here to justify the additional cost. There are a variety of companies in Utah that have sprung up to fill this need. The company in question has found people all over the country that want to see cleaned up movies. If Hollywood would simply provide the toned down versions that they have already made of these movies on DVD they could realize additional revenue.
This is not censorship. Censorship is when someone else decides what you get to watch. This is consumers deciding for themselves that they don't want to view particular content. I doubt that many /.ers can respect that, but they should be able to see the difference.
Certainly if I buy a book I am free to rip out any pages that I want. The magic of DVDs allows you to "rip out pages" without doing so permanently. Why hasn't this technology been supported by Hollywood?
Lasers Controlled Games!
Who the hell is this guy to determine what should and should not be in a particular movie? I'd hate to see his version of Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut -- it'd be about half an hour long.
It's bad enough already that anything anyone could possibly consider objectionable gets cut out for TV broadcast. I'm sure this guy would love it if Walmart decided to start selling only his censored versions of movies in their stores, to avoid the inevitable objections of several random parents.
it's that any idiot would try to take the swear words out of a film in the first place
If I buy a print of the Mona Lisa, do I have the right to draw on it? Yes, I do.
The idiot is the guy who thinks that Leonardo's artistic vision trumps my consumer rights.
But Coolidge and other filmmakers argue the films are the creative property of the filmmakers and cannot be altered without permission. A person who is troubled by the content of a film should simply not watch it. Censoring it even temporarily is not an option, she argues. "We are talking about a technology that obliterates the intention of a movie. Parents can control what their child sees by not allowing it in the house."
Here's an analogy for those of you who aren't as familiar with filmmaking. Suppose you develop a schnazzy new algorithm for sorting through your company's client database. You toil over this thing for months until you've tweaked it to the point that it will not run any faster. You go to lunch, celebrating the fact that the method is a good as it can be. When you get back from lunch, you find that the asshole intern the company hired has taken your code out of CVS, changed the display parameters, and made it look like it ran a few millis faster. Now he looks like a god and you look like the asshole.
Films are not things that spring up overnight. Essentially, from a director's view, these "editors" are amateurs who are detracting from the movie's message. Whether that message is "Elizabeth Berkley can't act, but she CAN be nude," or "Tom Hanks is a fine father and hitman." is completely irrelevant. Choosing one movie to edit and not another hurts ALL films.
"Goodness, how did you people live long enough to invent tools?" -Hobbes (the tiger, not the philosopher)
Not only that, you won't be able to skip back to recheck things that happened or stop half way and start it again a year later. There might even be a time frame within which you have to finish the book otherwise you are not experiencing it as the artist intended! Art is put out there by the artists, how consumers choose to consume it has been and always will be up to the consumer. If I want to hang a Picasso upside down, that's my business (God, I wish I owned a Picasso).
No sigs please, I'm British!!
If I buy a print of the Mona Lisa, do I have the right to draw on it? Yes, I do.
You missed my point. Of course you have every right to draw a turtleneck on the Mona Lisa. But that doesn't make you any less an idiot. Ignorance and intolerance go hand in hand and they are the two most destructive forces in the world. Their instrument is religion although needless to say the article in the Salt Lake Tribune wasn't in the least motivated by religion-endorsed ignorance, now was it???
Now how many /.ers really looked at the source of this article? I didn't think so...
This is actually a pretty tricky issue. I can't just take a copyrighted work, alter it wihtout permission, and resell it. That's illegal. BUT... I want someone to seriously come and tell me that I can't rip a page out of a book I've bought. Altering a tape someone brings and asks for is one thing... ALtering it in advance, anticipating their desire is another... but are they legally the same? I mean, the real-time filters are obviously legal: noone can force a particular frame around what you view. Saying tis is illegal would make picture-in-picture illegal. But I think there is a legal case that a business cannot market a preedited version of copyrighted content without the consent of the copyright holder.
One more question: doesn't Blockbuster routinely edit movies it rents for content? I've heard this a million times but I've never seen absolute confirmation of it. If so I'm surprised it's not mentioned in the article...
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
No, the idiot is the guy who buys Leonardo's artistic vision, and crayons over it.
BTW, your argument is bad because the Mona Lisa is one of a kind. I promise you, if you bought all the famous American paintings and burned them 'because its your consumer rights', you'd have to deal with the rights of art lovers around the world to live in a society that preserves its culture. I can assure you that you have no rights when it comes to pissing on original and important pieces of cultural work. I dont know what the gory details are, but I think you'll find that you are not permitted to piss on your culture, even if you own it. (Could be wrong, but shouldn't be.)
Now, if you have copy #2342032 of the latest blockbuster, can you draw on it? Of course you can. The problem is simply the aggregated editing houses that will make it so 'easy' for the culture to censor their own culture that the censored works of its famed artsits become more popular and widespread than the original artistic vision. (For instance, if somebody drew a mustache on Mona Lisa prints, and sold those, you could raise an entire generation of folks who threw out what was good about the Mona Lisa because Leonardo's mustache drawing abilities were clearly sub-par.)
It's a slipperly slope. There really isn't that much difference in 'editing' something and 'completetly editing it out of existance' a la book bonfire. When you begin to aggregate censorship in large amounts, it doesn't matter if its a private body or a public body that does the censoring - it still breaks the crucial cycle of communication required between populus and the artistic community required to inspire creativity and lateral thinking in the non-art world.
To summarize, editing your 'print' of something should be legal and dandy, although probably should be discouraged by the social body in question in order to prevent a slide down that slope. Meanwhile, editing originals is very much a different thing, as cultural works of importantce are shared among a society by virtue of being culturally significant in the first place. I believe this falls into the basket of the 'general will' contract one makes with a society by choosing to participate in it.
"Old man yells at systemd"
So,if I were to skip part of a book, would I be in violation of the artists 'moral rights?" Are works of satire now to be considered in violation of these rights? Do you have to listen to every song on a CD instead of cutting and pasting to make a CDR you like? What about my "moral right" to create a CD mix I like? Get real. The artist got their money from the sale, and they can ask no more. The person put up their money to buy it, and now has the right to do whatever they want with it.
I find it hilarious that moral relatavists are supporting "moral rights." What a pile of crap. They do not live or believe in principles of morality, but go about protecting "moral rights" that have nothing to do with morality.
Well, the library owns the books, not the person who checks them out, so of course it is destruction of property. But that is not a good example. Now ... what if a person BUYS a book from a bookstore and edits it, and then redistributes it. That certainly isn't censorship!
Oh, and I never said anything about copyright law, I believe you are right in that regard.
Fault loves the past, worry loves the future, but content enjoys the present.
Let's be honest...it isn't about the artists wanting to maintain their integrity and be concerned over censorship. If that were the case, they wouldn't have done business with a big studio.
That being said...and after reading the article, there is no illegal distribution going on. That is, the editing companies are not editing a video and then selling copies of the edits. They are selling the *actual videos* in an edited form. The editing companies actually own the copies they're chopping. The doctrine of first sale says they own those copies and can do as they please (short of copyright infringement).
Really, this situation isn't much different than someone buying a bunch of cases from Antec or Lian Li, adding some popular case mods and then reselling them to the public. In the case of Lian Li, the studios can actually learn a lesson - Lian Li now sells cases with window mods built-in.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Not quite.
Star Wars came out in 1977, but that's me being a nitpick.
As to you second point, you made the distinction right there: it's the studios that own the films who edit them for television, etc. We're talking about third parties who don't have that right.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Coolidge's comments are Hollywood's first real response to the growing -- and lucrative -- trend;
and
The debate in Utah began four years ago when an American Fork company, Sunset Video, found a profitable business in clipping a nude scene from hundreds of video copies of "Titanic" brought to them by owners.
All the artistic crap aside, Cooldge and her cronnies are just out for the cash. Between the editied videos which is minor and the "shielding" which is where the big bucks will be, there is a ton o'cash to be made over the next 10-15 years. Think baby boomers and thier teenage children.
Now if Collidge can get a few bucks from every unit shielding sold or a few extra bucks from theaters that show a modifed version then she is on to something.
Are they gong to try to eliminate the FFWD button from all VCR/DVD units? It's pretty much the same thing. Someone is just paying someone else to push the friggin button for them.
You mean the way Stanley Kubrick did with Eyes Wide Shut? There is a long orgy scene in EWS, that American censors said would have to go, because it was too explicit. In the version shown in American obstructions were digitally drawn in to hide the, um, "action".
But as to the deeper question, "why don't artists just give people what they want?" I am going to translate that to "why don't artists just give people what they are comfortable with, what won't challenge them?"
Well, many film-makers, writers, musicians, entertainers do exactly that. But there are great artists, like Kubrick, who feel they have a point of view that it is important to express. They think that they have an idea that it is important to present to the public even if it isn't completely comfortable at first.
Is this a good thing? It depends how you feel about cultural and social change. American writer Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote a book called Uncle Tom's Cabin. I believe the term "Uncle Tom" has a cultural meaning nowadays that it acquired in the last couple of generations. I believe that scholars such as those whose article you can read in the link I have pointed to, contend that UTC was an uncomfortable read for many, when it was published, because it put a human face on the effects of slavery for white American readers. So, yeah, I believe being open to letting artist's challenge our accepted views of things is worthwhile.
From the original article, this usage (editing copies for someone) falls easily under First Sale. We don't have some third party company editing the films and reselling them. We have a third party company taking an already purchased tape and editing out the bits the person doesn't want.
The real question is, what happens when such a person buys a DVD ? Will the third-party company be guilty of violating the DMCA by ripping the disc, editing out the bits, and burning a new one? I suspect the answer is "Yes" -- which means that the DMCA kills First Sale for digital media. Some will argue that was one of the points of the DMCA, though certainly not one to which the MPAA would ever admit.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Now, I know this will be hard, but I want everyone to take a deep breath and think about the issue for a second.
Third-parties are editing creative works that are not their own to meet their particular standards. They want to screen out tits, Jar-Jar, whatever. The argument that seems to be pretty popular here is that "we bought, we can do what we want with it." This is true, to a point. If I want to watch my own 30-minute version of Eyes Wide Shut that's my own business.
Where it gets complicated is that people are making that edit and then selling it. Even if it's marked, under what right are they doing this? They didn't create it. Like it or not, a film is a work of art. The entire film is an expression of the artistic vision of the creator. To alter it is to alter the message, which does a gross disservice to the creator.
What would Lolita be without a 14-year old girl (never mind that she was 12 in the book)? Clockwork Orange sans violence. Armageddon with no asteroid?
A film is not just some montage of scenes pieced together for you viewing. It has a point, maybe a moral--it's going somewhere. At the very least it is telling a story that has certain nuances.
My point is simple: the art is being altered and then being sold. Even if it's marked as edited, it's being sold under the original title. Let's say that Titanic is edited to remove the lovemaking between Winslet and DiCaprio? Is it still a James Cameron film? Hard to say, really, because you aren't seeing what he intended. Think about that, for a second. Consumer rights this, consumer rights that--what about artistic rights?
~Chazzf
No statement is true, not even this one.