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Directors Counter-Sue Movie Bowdlerizing Company
crazyhorse44 writes "The lesser of two evils? 'The Directors Guild of America is suing more than a dozen companies that delete scenes depicting violence, sex and profanity from Hollywood films, saying the process violates federal copyright law. The lawsuit, filed Friday in Denver, was a response to a suit filed last month by Clean Flicks of Colorado, which is part of the Utah-based rental chain Clean Flicks. The company had asked a judge to rule its practice legal, despite protests from several well-known directors, including Robert Redford and Steven Spielberg. Clean Flicks argues it doesn't violate copyright law because it purchases a new copy each time it edits a film and because customers are technically owners of the videos through a cooperative arrangement. The edited tapes also carry a disclaimer that the film was edited for content, the company says.' Whose side to take? The DGA is defending the desecration of many of our favorite films, while Clean Flicks is strongly advocating for the copyright rights of the consumer to edit and/or alter the media that they purchase. At the extreme you have folks who want to eliminate all traces of sex and violence from the popular media against the movie industry who wants to eliminate all property rights of the consumer. Whose side would you take? Links at Salon, USA Today and FindLAW." We've had previous stories here and here.
On top of this we have a fairly good relationship with the major anime distributors in the US. Primarily because we DO stop distributing titles once they're released. Before release we're giving them free advertising. After release we're cutting into their profits.
So we do NOT have the right to distribute fansubs, but we're tolerated as long as we play fair. This status will likely change if Anime continues to become more popular and more money is involved.
A steaming cup of soykaf would be real wiz right now.
Mystery Science Theater 3000 (and, presumably, similar "reworkings" of films such as What's Up, Tiger Lily and Steve Oedekerk's horrid Kung Pow) exist because the producers of them got permission from and/or paid a license fee to the original copyright owners.
I have no objection to people creating their own derivative works based on movies they have bought. But I don't see how a for-profit company can justify doing that without the permission of the original copyright holders. The "we don't actually OWN the movies, we just perform the service of editing them" defense seems pretty flimsy to me and I wouldn't expect it to hold up in court.
Dunno if you've been to college at all or recently, but any student I knew would much rather buy a used textbook - not only because they were cheaper, but because if the prior owner was at all intelligent, then it really reduced your workload by the book being well-highlighted. New books almost never sell until the used ones sell out. So the edited version has more value.
In the movie example, how would clean flicks stay in business if they decreased the value of the movie? They buy a movie at standard retail and sell it for more. And obviously they have customers. That's the definition of value-added.
A car is not a copyrighted work. Your analogy is poor and misleading.
A car may not be copyrighted, but it's fairly irrelevant, because there's no part in copyright law that prevents resale (Used record stores still exist). There's also no part that says "upon resale, work must remain intact." So, since copyright law makes no guarantee of creative integrity, the car sees the same protection under law: ie, NONE.
So I'd say the guy's analogy looks pretty good.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
A car is not a copyrighted work. Your analogy is poor and misleading.
Actually a car is. Its standard to do this with any sort of design which alot of work has been put into, like a design for a building.
If it wasn't, you can be sure there would be tonnes of fake, cheap, imported Corvettes running around.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.