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Clean Flicks' Preemptive Strike For the Right To Edit
alanjstr writes: "We all hate how movies get 'edited for tv,' removing the sex, gore, and foul language that make them worth watching. A private firm decided to rent videos for private use after having made them clean. The Directors Guild of America doesn't like things like this (a la The Phantom Edit). CNN.com carries an article about Clean Flicks suing for the right to make edits. It's copyright vs. the first amendment as they battle over the right to censor and fair use." Since the equipment to make your own versions of movies is so ubiquitous, it would be interesting to see edit decision lists circulate for particular films.
I think it should be acceptable to make changes like this.
Since it's not the Government doing it, there really isn't a Constitutional arguement here.
Clean Flicks should be allowed to do this. When they do sell or rent these films, they are clearly marked as edited.
Since the equipment to make your own versions of movies is so ubiquitous, it would be interesting to see edit decision lists circulate for particular films.
Imagine passing around the equivalent of a shell script...or wait, no, a *patch*...to edit movies to your taste. This one takes out the filth, that one makes The Phantom Edit, t'other one puts in that steamy sex scene from The Golden Girls Cut Loose (gah!).
It'd require the equivalent of patch for video, of course, but I bet with Unix at least you'd be able to put something very much like that together right now. And then, imagine if Clean Flicks just sold those li'l scripts. What would the directors do then?
(Another lawsuit, duh. Silly question.)
Carousel is a lie!
I live in Boise, Idaho, and there's a Clean Flicks near my grocery store. I walked in a couple of weeks ago to see what the hubbub was about.
At first glance, it looks like a regular (albeit small) video store. They stock mostly VHS. Most (but not all) of them are edited, and clearly say so on the outside of the box. This business does not pass off their movies as being the original. Their edit method is to take the original tape, physically remove the offending section of tape, and splice it back together.
They also stocked a number of DVDs. Those were done a bit more interestingly. They had the original DVD case. Riveted to the DVD case was the original DVD. There was a sticker on it saying that it had been rendered unwatchable, it was only there as proof of purchase, and any attempt to remove it would result in a $30 charge against your account. Where you would normally find the DVD was a DVD-R disk, presumably with a digitally edited version of the movie on it. On the disk was a standard CD Label with info such as the movie run time and the like.
While I like my movies with all the sex and violence, I can understand that some people do not. These people are not on a mission to clean up all of Hollywood. They admit that some movies can't be "cleaned up" without destroying them. But, if they want to try, as long as they're not being deceptive, or engaging in copyright violation, I have trouble caring.
Here's an excerpt where Deseret News critic Chris Hicks makes a couple of interesting points about editing:
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Over the years, a number of companies -- some based right here in Utah -- have tried to persuade movie studios to release the versions of their movies that are already edited for airlines and commercial television, and therefore apparently sanctioned by the filmmakers and studios. But it's always fallen apart, usually over "artistic reasons."
Filmmakers think of themselves as artists, but how can they argue that removing profanity or nudity or gore harms a film when it's done all the time for airlines and TV? How are video versions any different?
What's more, they already release videos of movies edited in the other direction. There are harsher, "unrated" video versions of "Basic Instinct," "Nutty Professor II," "American Pie" and many others lining video shelves right now.
(http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,40502585
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Well, distributing the content after changing it is pretty fuzzy, they shouldn't misrepresent someone else's work.
But I wonder if it would be possible in the future to distribute only the edits to the movie. Then you buy/rent the original movie and then apply the edits. In fact you could probably come up with some interesting satirical mash-ups this way (imagine turning a long movie into a 15-minute short about some incidental character). Kinda like distributing a source code patch, it could even include new content. But never actually distributes the original.
They'd try and shut it down like everything else, but morally I think it would be in the clear.
August 7th boys.
I can't remember what I had for dinner last night but I could remember seeing this on the main page.