Slashdot Mirror
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.
This would be a good story to base a poll on!
My vote is hung, can't decide.
Compaclft
I think, on this one, they're solidly in the right.
/market/ that... seems idiotic, to me. I'm hoping the directors win.
Sure, people have a right to not be exposed to that sort of content. They're free to find other movies to watch, ones that mesh better with their ideals. The idea that they have some sort of right to take a knife to someone else's work... and then
Now, I have no problem with people doing their own editing. The main issue, as I see it, is that all these little companies are making money off of the destruction of someone else's creative vision. And that... just sits very badly with me.
is there a sister company called Dirty Flicks, which makes films consisting solely of all the bits they cut out?
"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?"
This is an easy one, you quite clearly take the side of the consumer, even though in this case you may not agree with their use of their rights. Free speach is to be supported, even if no one person could support, say, the racist and anti-racist uses that this may be put to. So first you support the fundamental principle and then you critisise those who would use that right for what you may consider to be "the wrong ends".
C'mon - this is not an issue. I will happily take the side of someone arguing for end-user rights. Full stop.
Just because a company who is willing to defend this right decides to sanitize films for overprotective parents does not make them less worthy of it. Further, the fact they make those sanitized films puts me under no obligation at all to be their customer.
We should be supporting them if we agree with the goal of making copyright law more sane, and protecting the right to use products that we purchased, not questioning what they do with that right.
- - - Non Caffeine Drink or Drink Error
You're either "FOR copyright facism" or "AGAINST censorship." I think I'll choose against censorship.
I think we've had more than enough puritanism. If you don't want your kids to see violence or sex, don't show them the bloody movie. Read them a book or something. Or would that be too much work for parents?
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I've always wondered why censorship is needed if proper age limits are set. Perhaps the discussion shouldn't be whether we can see the movie without censoring or not, but if they have the proper age restrictions. I've found it strange that here in Sweden, we have the highest normal restriction at an age of 15 when we are minors until 18. Still, movies with extreme violence are shown without problems to 15 year olds. Heck, I'm sure 14 year olds can watch the movie without too much trouble as well.
When we have the "proper" age restrictions (where it's another story to decide how to set them), I definitely think we should have no censorships. I can decide what to watch and not. If I had bad experiences from an extremely violent movie, I would never think "Oh, why didn't they protect me from that scene by censoring it!?" but instead "Why did the director keep that unnecessarily violent scene".
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
The studios release differing versions of movies for a number of purposes:
TV
airlines
for release in different regions
They release "unrated" versions of movies like American Pie on DVD.
Yet, somehow when consumer groups ask for versions of videos that are more "family friendly" (say, the same versions they provide for TV or airlines), the studios turn their noses up.
Finally, people get fed up with this and someone begins to profit by providing what people are asking for. The studios realize that someone else is making a profit and turn their lawyers loose.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
btw, I'm almost tempted to buy Pulp Fiction from them. I think the entire movie would be about 5 minutes long -- the scene where honey bunny is talking about blueberry pankakes.
Nah, scratch that, they aren't married and are in a hotel together. OK, the boring cab scene.
"I'm American, our names don't mean bleeep"
Not tricky at all from the side that matters: the public's side. People who want movies without the profanity and whatnot now have a choice. The rest of us can still rent the smutty versions at our local video rental. This is not censorship, and it isn't any different from TV stations editing out naughty bits or beeping out cusswords.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
People are in a huff about Clean Flicks because what's being edited is sex and violence, which gets one side yelling "smut!" and the other side "censorship!". But really, if it's what the viewer wants to watch, cutting the sex scenes out of doesn't seem worse than cutting Jar Jar Binks out of Star Wars 1. Best of all (but probably not feasible) would be if the edited movie was delivered as an edit list on the same media (e.g. DVD) as the unedited original, so the viewer would always be able to choose which version s/he wanted to watch. The edit list would just tell the player to automatically skip parts of the movie, if the user enables it.
If you really feel that watching a movie the way you perfer it even though it differs from the original presentation is wrong, well, listening to a CD outside of it's original presentation on the CD is wrong, too.
For all the babbling that goes on here at Slashdot about fair use, for someone to even question what ClearFlicks is doing is "right" really blows my mind (Well, it would if this weren't Slashdot).
Do I like what they're doing? No.
Do I have plans on buying movies from them? No.
Is it wrong for people to do what they want with their PROPERTY for their own private use? NO.
I'm sorry, but you can't have it both ways people - either you agree that we have our fair use rights, or we don't. So what if someone is doing something that you feel is Bad(tm) on artistic grounds? It's their choice to make - let them waste their money how they see fit, just as I should be allowed to waste mine as I see fit.
No one's forcing me to watch their bastardized verion of a movie - I see no reason someone should be forced to watch the original.
Who does it hurt if people want to purchase (rent) a mutilated copy of a movie to watch? While I think most would agree they are short-changing themselves, I hardly see how this could be hurting anyone else. A legitimate copy of the movie has been purchased, so Royalties have been paid. A disclaimer is shown so people don't blame the inevitable crappiness of the movie on the directory. Honestly, I ask, what is wrong with this?
I frankly don't see any victims(other than the suckers renting this watered-down crap). And if you do see a problem with this, What about other movie edittings (I recall a certain edit of Star Wars Episode 1 that was rather popular involving, or should I say lacking, in a certain Mr. Binks)?
Anyone remember Woody Allen's _What's Up, Tiger Lily_ film?
He took a terrible Japanese film and redubbed it with his own words to make the film considerably more enjoyable. Pretty heavy editing, that could have gotten him in some kind of trouble if Hollywood manages to succeed in their bid to keep people from editing movies.
Then there's Mystery Science Theater 3000...
And so it goes.
Clean Flicks is presumably copying the original film in the course of making its edit. If they win this case, it shows that such temporary copies aren't infringement after all. That could get rid of the MAI ruling, which would in turn make a lot of awful EULA's unenforceable.
I am supporting Clean Flicks on this one.
No, this is a clear misstatement of what's going on here. Clean Films, etc, are not removing anything from "the popular media". They're producing an alternative version of the popular media, for consumption by their customers.
In the past, the US-based religious right has launched verbal attacks on Hollywood. The response of many people to the religious right's arguments has been that if you don't like it, don't go and see it. Now, Clean Films are providing a third way: you can now see a version without the bits you don't like (a bit like the "Phantom Edit" does for Jar Jar Binks haters).
What Clean Films is doing is in fact an example of the classic liberal remedy for "bad speech": more speech. For myself, Clean Films' products, like "Christian Rock", will no doubt be aesthetically unpleasant. But I applaud their creativity in finding another way forward besides the bigoted "Clean Up Hollywood" crusades of the past.
The Director's Guild's actions here are plain and simple attempts at control, in an era when the technology has opened up new avenues for participation in popular culture. They're trying to maintain a simple "push" model of production, and a extremely simplistic and philosophically untenable notion of the director as solitary "creative genius". I REALLY hope they lose this one.
P
This discussion has nothing to do with 'artistic control'. It is about money.
The studios do not like a third party assuming any kind of editorial control over their content.
Someone has discovered a good market and is making money from it.
The studios are suing to try to regain control. As usual, Hollywood is reacting to events instead of leading them.
It is hard to sympathise with either party here: the studios are using lawyers instead of their imagination.
Clean Flicks are acting like mullahs. But no-one is being forced to chose their versions. Maybe a better comparison would be DJs who remix other's music.
The obvious solution is for the studios to give consumers the choices they want and are willing to pay for.
Knowing Hollywood, this is unlikely to happen fast.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
So let's get this straight: the directors want you to watch every part of the movie, just because they made it?
;-)
So when I watch pr0n I can't fast-forward the 'dialogs'?
Better start stocking up on good books...
PageTurner Reader: open-source e-reader for Android with cloudsync. http://pageturner-reader.org
In practice, however, I get a sinking feeling in my belly at the idea that censored versions of "cultural works" (movies, books, whatever) will be going into wide distribution (not sure how wide, but certainly wider than it currently is should this be judged a legal practice). this uneasiness is compounded by the realization that community pressure will push people towards only renting from the "nice store" that doesn't push "dirty movies" (yes I'm caricaturing, but social pressures _do_ work this way).
I would much prefer that the original version of the movie be distributed on DVD, along with a DVD playlist that can be used to playback a "niche audience" version (similar to "play widescreen/fullscreen").
I see this as actually being a significant enough market that some sort of modified DVD player that accepts a separate CD (containing one or many "alternate cut" playlists for a film) could be a strong seller, with several bonuses:
As far as this case goes (IANAL etc. etc.), I see the achilles heel as being the cooperative ownership aspect. That seems to fall right in the zone of judicial judgment (please correct me if I'm off), and the entertainment industry has all those scary lawyers who know exactly which judges to push the case in front of, not to mention plenty of other dirty tricks.
(In short, both sides suck, and everyone should listen to me.)
The slashdot blurb is misleading - the DGA represents the directors, not the corporations - hence the crap about robbing consumers of their rights by pushing DRM is complete hogwash. What we have here is a bunch of people who want to watch the latest movies, but who are unwilling to watch the whole thing (due to hang-ups about sex, violence, etc.) They want to live nice "clean" lives, and don't want to see the movie as the director intended.
:P
Lacking the know-how to do it themselves, they happily employ the services of this company, which has made big inroads among certain communities, and is making this business of chopping films for consumption very profitable. It's getting to the point where the movies the directors make are not getting to the end audience they way they intended.
Traditionally, the way the directors handled these cases was pretty much - tough, that's my film, if you don't like some of the material, you're welcome not to watch. It was up to the individual. Here, you have what arguably is a distributor (the "co-ownership" agreement aside, which I would argue is purely a legal device), dictating what the audience sees.
"So what?", you say? "The audience wants them to edit the films for them!" Well, there are several different takes on this issue, so let me re-frame the situation. People want web-filters to block "unsuitable" sites as well. Does that mean we should support web-blocking, since the blocking only happens by request of the end-user? Perhaps.
What about a bookstore with "sanitized" versions of popular works? Would you support that, even though it violates the writer's moral rights (after all, you have changed their work WITHOUT their permission.) Some of you would probably find that distasteful, or even disingenuous.
Personally, I find the practice disturbing. It's bad enough people choose to ignore history and reality, without enabling a practice that effectively filters out ideas and images, on popular media. What's next? Editing out minority populations (language and violent situations are already a casualty on movies and cartoons screened on network and even cable TV), replacing dialogue, or even characters?
Yes, much of this already happens with the blessing of the media companies (partially because they want to cater to this restrictive audience.) The directors gripe and grumble, but in the end, they can try and deliver DVDs and Videos that capture the vision of what they wanted to deliver. This service takes that control away, and puts it in the hands of a third party censor, who then effectively controls the vision of what is seen by this particular population.
In the end though, I guess what really bothers me is the attitude that these people have. It's the kind of attitude, I want to consume all I want, but I don't want to deal with the consequences of my consumption. Or, to rephrase it for these folks, they hate Hollywood and everything that it stands for, but they want to be entertained anyways. Arguably a good business opportunity, but not one that I would personally support.
I don't remember directors releasing movies under GPL, so why should anyone be able to tamper with their work?
I genuinely believe that I should be able to do what I want with a product once I've bought it, as long as I do not tred on the toes of the person I bought it from.
Example: I buy a book. I should be allowed to lend it to a friend, tear pages out, write notes in the margin, strike out paragraphs I don't like or aren't interesting to me. Hell I should even be able to sell or give away my copy because I freakin' paid for it. People may not want to buy my copy if I've torn pages out or struck out certain paragraphs but if they know I've done this and still want to buy it then no-one should try and stop them buying it or me selling it.
Try NetBSD... safe,straightforward,useful.
No, see, the bizarro version of Clean Flicks would obviously be a company that splices frames from pornography into "family" films.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Now, I have no problem with people doing their own editing.
What Clean Flicks do is nothing more than provide a service editing movies that their customers own. Really, buying from Clean Flicks is no different from renting time in an editing suite and hiring someone to show you how to operate it.
The main issue, as I see it, is that all these little companies are making money off of the destruction of someone else's creative vision
By that argument, so is any company that makes equipment allowing someone to edit any tape. All Clean Flicks do is facilitate; it's not as if they are editing, then reproducing the edited movie without the studio getting paid. Every copy they sell is owned.
And that... just sits very badly with me.
The question is: do you own the movie, or just the right to watch the movie? If the studio retains control of the media, then that means you only have an license to watch the movie, you don't own it. Clearly that is an indefensible position: if it were true, and you damaged your copy, the studio would replace it for no more than the cost of duplication. That doesn't happen, which suggests that there is plenty of precedent for the movie being owned by whoever buys it, and thus they are free to do with it as they please.
I am usually proud of being a geek, and I've worked quite a bit at trying to fight geek stereotypes throughout my life, but for God's sake it is exactly this kind of story that makes me embarassed to be part of this community.
How can anyone here seriously take the position that the consumer is wrong here? After all our fights against the DMCA and DeCSS and GPL code that supposedly empowers us, why is this community suddenly getting cold feet when someone decides to use those rights to produce a product that we happened to find silly?
I mean, really, isn't this the kind of behavior that we should be encouraging? The religious right sees a bunch of movies that they don't like. And for once, their reaction is to simply fix what they find wrong for viewing within their own community of interested viewers. They aren't trying to get movies banned; they aren't trying to get YOU to stop going to the movies. They aren't even asking you to watch their edited version of the movies! (Though, of course, you are free to do so if you wish.) Isn't this exactly the kind of consumer-centered decsion making that we are supposedly fighting for? Wouldn't you prefer this solution, rather than this group trying to somehow force their edited-down versions to be official?
Besides, where was all this sudden concern over the sanctity of movies when geeks were making spoofs like TIE-tanic, or recutting the Star Wars trilogy, or making any of the thousand Star Trek "lost episodes" by putting new dialog to old footage? Oh, but someone uses this same technology and allowance of law to recut a movie in a way that you happen to not care for, and suddenly you're on the side of the RIAA?
Please.
I happen to be a sometimes-writer, and I have good friends who're far more serious about it than I am.
By your token, because I buy a book, I should therefore own all the contents of the book. This is the reason that copyright law exists--to protect the people who create things.
Cleanflicks obviously has to be making a profit off of this, or else they wouldn't be in business. (Well, one assumes, though you can never tell anymore.) If they're making a profit, they're making that profit because of the work of the people who created the movies... while not respecting that those people created a specific vision. Yes, sometimes that vision includes violence. You have plenty right to go see something else.
Ooh, I know. I'm going to go buy a bunch of big long books and cut out all the violence and sex and maybe the boring passages, too, and re-sell them. Of course, I'm not going to stop to ask the author what they think of this; it's my right to free speech, right? Forget the rights of the original creator. Forget, for that matter, their feelings, or that they're even human beings at all, because it's so much easier to think of them as the Evil Movie Industry whose sex and violence are so damaging to our precious little children.
In personal use, you're not making money for doing it. You do it for yourself, your family, sure. When you start doing it to make a buck, then you're doing the very thing that copyright law is designed to prevent.
Exactly. And nor should people be distributing modified versions of (say) Pulp Fiction as Pulp Fiction, not unless the director is ok with it. That's just straight-forward misrepresentation.
What is the difference between Clean Flicks and the fast forward button?
The fast forward button is private, Clean Flicks is not.
Note that I'm not saying people shouldn't be free to modify, parody, etc. films as they feel free - I just don't think copyright is the only issue.
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
Unfortunately, these days I wouldn't be surprised. Why? Most media has gone way too overboard. Sure, when I'm with the guys its fine but if there are little kids even around in the house, I don't want to. Movie houses such as these allow movies to be played without the worry of junior sneaking around when watching such films at night.
Anyway, I fail to see. How is hollywood gonna stop me now? Oh wait, some DVDs don't allow you to time advance!
Reality or nothing.
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.
If the director's case is uphelpd, then wouldn't it also be a breach of copyright to sell any book that didn't contain each and every letter it originally contained?
What you describe is exactly what copyright is designed to prevent. Modifieing a copyrighted work for profit. "Adding value" to an original copyright work is not covered under fair use.
Regarding value added software: In such cases the value added reseller has permission from the copyright owner to resell the value added version. Obviously this is the opposite of the Clean Flicks case.
By your token, because I buy a book, I should therefore own all the contents of the book.
Yes, that's right. If I buy a book and I want to tear out pages or cross through the boring bits or color in the pictures or fold over the corners where the dirty bits are, or write in the margin why the author was wrong... yes, I can do all that because it's my book.
This is the reason that copyright law exists--to protect the people who create things.
Copyright law prevents me from copying your works, it doesn't (or shouldn't) stop me tearing out the pages in copies made with your permission and purchased by me.
Cleanflicks obviously has to be making a profit off of this, or else they wouldn't be in business. (Well, one assumes, though you can never tell anymore.) If they're making a profit, they're making that profit because of the work of the people who created the movies... while not respecting that those people created a specific vision.
That's right, just like I can buy a car, respray it, replace the seats and resell it. Oh no, profiting without respecting a 'specific vision' how terrible. If you don't want me to modify a car don't sell it to me, clear?
Yes, sometimes that vision includes violence. You have plenty right to go see something else.
Yes, including the right to watch the bits of this I like and not the bits I don't.
Ooh, I know. I'm going to go buy a bunch of big long books and cut out all the violence and sex and maybe the boring passages, too, and re-sell them. Of course, I'm not going to stop to ask the author what they think of this; it's my right to free speech, right?
Yes, go ahead.
Forget the rights of the original creator
No, they keep all their rights intact. What's that got to do with you mutilating the books you own?
Forget, for that matter, their feelings, or that they're even human beings at all, because it's so much easier to think of them as the Evil Movie Industry whose sex and violence are so damaging to our precious little children.
What are you on? This has got nothing to do with them being evil. By all means respect their feelings BUT people really really are entitled to buy books and burn them specifically to hurt the feelings of the author if they want to. No, not pleasant, but hard to believe though it may be hurting people's feelings isn't a crime and I hope it never will be.
In personal use, you're not making money for doing it. You do it for yourself, your family, sure. When you start doing it to make a buck, then you're doing the very thing that copyright law is designed to prevent.
Rubbish. Copyright law was about protecting an income stream in order to encourage the creation of works. It was never about protecting people's feelings from people who were making money without
"respecting their vision". The idea is completely without foundation.
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
if TV networks can insert ads in a movie (I highly doubt the director meant for those tampon commercials to be in there), then cleanflicks can remove offensive content. both change the content. I fail to see the difference.
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
One time, when I was visiting the US, I had the unfortunate experience of watching it on TV with all the naughty words altered. It completely ruined the emotional impact of the movie.
Such editing should not be done without the permission of the director. Not by Clean Flicks, and neither by TV stations.
Let's imagine that you've just made a small film on a shoestring budget. For the sake of argument, let's say that it's a biting socio-political expose of the corruption in industry and goverment.
Now here comes Microsoft. They buy copies of your film, redact the parts that they don't like, and release them with your name on it, and slap on little "Edited to remove adult themes" stickers.
If they have the marketing muscle to make their version more readily available than yours (and they do), then they can de facto change what you said. Sure, if they're buying a copy of your original every time they sell a redacted version then you make money, but perhaps that wasn't your intention. By bringing money into it - whether you ask for it or not - they also paint you as a whore ("We've already established what you are, now we're just discussing price"). They can simply buy your rights away from you, even if you don't want to sell.
That's perhaps an extreme example, although you can take it further (what if they start adding scenes?). But it illustrates the limits of fair use rather nicely. While I'm fiercely in favour of individual fair use, I do not believe that fair use covers commercial editing and duplication, simply because allowing it for arguably good intentions opens it up to abuse for rather henious ones as well.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Hmm... don't get it.
Censoring someone else is NOT an exercise of free speech, but an infringement of it. You have every right not to watch a film if you don't like it's content, but that does NOT mean you can chop out what you don't like and then redistribute it.
So this means that I can sell a copy of Ender's Game (Great book by Orson Scott Card, btw) on Ebay (Since I bought it) when I'm done. But since the shower scene was disturbing, I ripped those 5 pages out. So now I can't sell it?
You're telling me that the only way I could get rid of this book is by throwing it away then? Aren't you forgetting the fact that I would be clearly letting people know that those pages are gone, and that those people would actually have to come to me to get this copy with a brutal murder removed from the book?
Is it censorship when the people viewing the material have to make an effort to have it that way? Or is it simply a matter of choice for them? They'd rather watch a hacked up movie than one with those scenes in... You and I wouldn't want to, but then again we wouldn't be patrons in this store in the first place.
But fair use doesn't ever permit you to redistribute any copy of the film to anyone else, regardless of whether there is any profit at all, because it's NOT YOUR FILM. It's only your COPY of the film. Possesion of the copy doesn't give you the right to edit the original work.
Hmm... you can't redistribute originals of the materials you buy? Did you check that out?
They go buy a tape. They edit that tape. They sell/rent that tape. Selling/Renting copies is not a factor here.
Personally, I'm squarely on the side of the rental store.
1) They bought the tapes, they can do with them what they like short of selling/renting copies of those tapes.
2) They aren't pushing for censorship of the source material (unlike 5,000 other groups out there). They have their own 'acceptable copies' and quietly rent those out to people of like minds.
3) They aren't forcing their views on others, indeed customers have to seek them out.
After all, what are they doing that a fast-forward button in the hands of some evilly moralistic moviewatacher couldn't do?
'Life is like a spoonful of Drain-O, it feels good on the way down but leaves you feeling hollow inside'
Rental and sales of already edited movies is another thing entirely. Just as I should not be able to edit The Lord of the Rings, then sell it, and just as I should not be able to change Perl to no longer have regexes and still distribute it as "Perl", I shouldn't be able to edit out the good bits of a movie and distribute the movie. Unless, of course, I got the permission of the copyright holder.
Fair use is good. Further, Cleanflicks could still stay in business, albeit with a change of focus to the editing business. Further, with appropriate automation, they should be able to turn things around nearly as fast as if they just stocked edited movies. I think preserving the distinction between stocking edited movies and actually producing an edited version of the owner's copy is important.
Broadcast TV gets permission to do this, therein lies the difference.
What I'd really like to see is Clean Flicks version of The Fountainhead. Would they remove the scene where Roark destroys the buildings he designed because someone else altered his design?
I wish these people would edit the sex out of their own lives, it would do wonders for the gene pool!
My other sig is extremely clever...
If I buy a book and I want to tear out pages or cross through the boring bits or color in the pictures or fold over the corners where the dirty bits are, or write in the margin why the author was wrong... yes, I can do all that because it's my book.
Granted. But what if you want to sell that book later? Is it still the same book you bought?
Used college textbooks sell for 1/2 to 2/3 of the price of new texts, even if they're the same edition and only a single semester old, for this reason: by applying your edits to the book, you're decreasing its value to anyone but yourself.
That's right, just like I can buy a car, respray it, replace the seats and resell it. Oh no, profiting without respecting a 'specific vision' how terrible. If you don't want me to modify a car don't sell it to me, clear?
A car is not a copyrighted work. Your analogy is poor and misleading.
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.
Granted. But what if you want to sell that book later? Is it still the same book you bought?
Used college textbooks sell for 1/2 to 2/3 of the price of new texts, even if they're the same edition and only a single semester old, for this reason: by applying your edits to the book, you're decreasing its value to anyone but yourself.
You seem to be opening a whole new can of worms. If you sell a book that you have torn pages from or written in, should that be illegal? You say it is of less value? What if Jim Morrison wrote poetry in the margins? Isn't that more valuable?
And what about the used book sellers? They are buying used books and reselling them at a profit and the author never sees a dime. How many times can you resell Darwin's The Origin of Man before it's worn out? Should the publisher be paid for each resale?
Viv
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What rights are those? If you don't want someone cutting up your movie, and possibly reselling it, don't sell them a copy. That goes whether "them" is Joe Blow or Microsoft.
What duplication? You seem to be talking about situations that do not exist.
That's an absurd comment to make. First Sale doctrine protects your right to alter copies of works you have bought, e.g. tearing pages out of a book. First Sale doctrine protects your right to resell a copy of a work you have bought, e.g. selling a used book.
Are you so stupid that you are seriously telling me that I can only do one of those at a time? Seems so!
Here's a nickel, kid -- don't bother coming back to talk about copyright issues till you've read up on the law.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.