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Cutting out the Naughty Bits Ruled Illegal
An anonymous reader writes "Some of you may recall the lawsuit brought by several Hollywood directors against companies which edit movies for sex, language, and violence. The companies would trade consumers an off-the-shelf DVD for an edited one. Well, the CBC is reporting that Judge Richard P. Matsch has found that this practice violates U.S. copyright law, and 'decreed on Thursday in Denver, Colo., that sanitizing movies to delete content that may offend some people is an "illegitimate business." [...] The judge also praised the motives of the Hollywood studios and directors behind the suit, ordering the companies that provide the service to hand over their inventories.'''
Parents don't use DVR's to produce commercially sold edited copies of content published by another party.
What I don't understand is why Wal-Mart censors things anyway. If people don't like the content, why don't they just, you know, not buy it?
Without a proper flamewar, Anonymous was undecided on what shell to run.
I think the difference there is that you're not distributing your edited copy to the public.
Nothing disgusts me more then watching or reading something I know has been censored. People should be free to consume whatever media they want to, as long as it isn't hurting anybody no one should have the right to tell me what I can and can't see. Furthermore if I created a work of art I would find it supremely offensive to have some clensing squad go over it and take out the stuff that might offend people, chances are if it offends someone it was put there for that reason. This is with the possible exception of old works that have become offensive, but in that case they should be left as they are and taken in the context that they were created.
I did RTFA, but it didn't mention how the practice violated copyright law. I understand the concerns of the people producing the original works. However:
1) The works weren't sold in stores, so the only people who had them were people who intentionally wanted them. It's not like selling a ripoff or counterfeit.
2) Doesn't this count as fair use. Does this mean that I can't take a song from a CD I bought and remove sections of it? Or it it because the companies were making a profit off of the derviation that it violated the law?
-Ryan
AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
Something tells me that the director's "artistic vision" for example didn't include Bruce Willis saying ""Yippee-ki-yay Mister Falcon." in Die Hard, or "This is what happens whey you find a stranger in the Alps!" in the Big Lebowski: how is that different from what these companies were/are doing? Or is it simply a case of "censoring is ok, as long as the studio does it? The "These films carry our name and reflect our reputations. So we have great passion about protecting our work ... against unauthorized editing," line sounds a bit hypocritical, especially if the companies in question did put some sort of disclaimer (cleaned by cleanflix, whatever) at the movie beginning.
-- the cake is a lie
Reselling altered copyrighted material is an interesting proposition legally. On the other hand, if I buy a DVD or video, I should have to right to view it however I want, and I think I should also have to right to pay someone else to edit it to my liking if I want; it's my DVD after all. Despite everything (no matter which side you take), copyright holders do not have a right to force me to view it the way they want me to. The hard part is that in order to change the DVD, I have to copy it first, which is now a felony. And I think that's the part where these companies have gotten tripped up.
Taking this ruling farther, is it illegal if I publish an MPlayer EDL list for editing out naughty bits of a DVD? I believe Hollywood would want to make it so. On the other hand, when the DVD format was created, it was intended all along that the DVD player could apply edit codes to the video to alter the rating, supply alternate soundtracks, etc. Very little of this has ever been used in the production of DVDs, as Hollywood is the one making them in the first place.
How about because you can't tell the difference between the consumer and a middleman. What you do is one thing. What a middleman does is something else. Got any other questions you want me to Google?
The smart thing to do is for the EFF and other orgs to make a temp alliance with the 'pro-family' groups to have copyright laws rewritten.
This is a chance to get more people involved in rolling back the increased rights granted to copyright holders these past few years.
Result in a nutshell: If I own a DVD, I cannot pay someone to make a copy of that movie for me sans parts I might find offensive. It's not censorship, because *I'm the one asking him to do it for me*. But in yet another defeat for personal freedom (and another win for the moneyed interests), the courts have found that this is a violation of copyright law.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
At,
Least in the USA we are "relatively" free to innovate.
What somebody needs to do is to devise a DVD player that can read a file delineating where the objectionable parts are on the particular DVD. Once the bad parts are known to the player the player simply skips them.
People who want to view the unedited version are happy and those that don't desire to see whatever content can be happy as well.
The original content on the original DVD is not altered in any manner. Copyright is protected.
Religious groups could then produce the "files" to correspond to their own needs and distribute these files via the Internet. The files are uploaded to the special DVD player...
It's basically the same as having Adblock installed in Firefox. You simply delineate what you don't want to see and Firefox delivers what you do want to see. No one is sueing Firefox for eliminating advertisements.
Should be the same for objectionable DVD content.
Caution: Contents under pressure
It's creating, marketing, and distributing a derivative work for commercial purposes without authorization, and completely absent any editorial or educational grounds.
The 'harm' is that, by law, it's the copyright owner's right to be the exclusive provider of such derivative works. Whether or not they actually choose to produce them is irrelevant to the question of whether or not they can prohibit others from doing so. Furthermore, in these cases the 'derivative' works may be remarkly similar to the original...
Do you think it should be legal for one movie studio to copy a currently-in-theatres blockbuster that cost some other studio $100M to produce and market, and then to sell a trivially edited version to theatres at a fraction of the normal price? If you give a blanket exemption to derivative works, this is really a logical consequence.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
To be clear, this is NOT a ruling against censorship in any way. This is a ruling that one cannot use the motives of private censorship to in any way go against copyright laws. They'll have to sell their 'services' to the (mostly) corporate owners of the rights to works, rather than directly to customers or retailers.
A fairly appropriate ruling, in the context. But this does mean that when a more automatic method of censorship comes around, then new forms of censorship shouldn't face these same legal barriers. They just have to be blind to which naughty bits and sounds they're covering up, fresh each time, so they're not producing a 'derrivative work' in a saleable form.
Ryan Fenton
I've got to say I'm pretty surprised by the number of voices saying here that there is a problem with this decision. This sounds like a perfectly sound interpretation of the law to me. The bowdlerizing companies are taking a copyrighted work, altering it in small ways, and then selling or renting the new work in a commercial enterprise. Even if the studios are paid, that does not mean that the buyer has a right to change and re-distribute the work, if the original owner does not permit that. Copyright gives the owner substantial control over his or her works. In the same way, the GPL allows me to copy and change source code, but does not allow me to do so without restriction, because the owner of the copyrights have assigned a license to that effect.
They just, you know, don't buy it. Thats exactly why Wal-mart and every other 'mart' purchases censored versions. Because they care about money and not much else.
Its a remarkable stupid situation where one company can't do something that other companies have done every day.
"What you can't do is type the contents of the book into a word processor, remove certain sections of it, reprint the modified book, and then sell that bound inside the original cover. That's the difference."
This is not a comparative description. For each copy of the movie these companies sell, they buy one from Hollywood. Thus, if they sell 1984 copies of Gladiator with the naughty bits omitted, then they buy 1984 copies from the movie production company first. Thus, it can be said they are only reselling the copy of the book that they themselves purchased and from which they ripped out naughty pages.
The only difference between my doing this and them doing this is that they are conducting the same business on a larger scale.
What is more important to Hollywood is what our society deems appropriate. If these companies become more popular, then it could be argued in court that this success means the naughty parts of these movies violate public decency and can therefore face government stricture. These standards have eroded over my lifetime, but it need not be so.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
Don't approve of this action just because you think it only hurts a bunch of "right-wing Christian zealots". Remember fair use! There was a one-to-one copy sold with each of these DVDs---the original and the edited. The filmmakers did not lose one dime, and in fact made money with each copy sold.
So if we are to argue that, if you bought something you have the legal right to do whatever you want to it (Fast Forward through commercials, play on a Linux box, rip to a hard drive), then you cannot allow Hollywood to start acquiring new rights for their so-called "artistic vision". Otherwise, you will find yourself unable to fast forward through scenes (or commercials) because that would violate the "artistic vision" of Hollywood.
Remember folks---it is all about control. Hollywood wants all the control. We cannot surrender even the smallest bit of it, because as soon as we do it establishes legal precedence.
And as for their pure "artistic vision", they regularly violate it when they make full-screen movies, TV versions, and rereleases of the same movie every 10 years.
Personally, I applaud the judge's ruling. I don't need these ultra-conservative idiots "cleaning" my movies before I watch 'em, just as I don't need a nanny to supervise everything I do. I'm 34 for chrissakes, let me live my life as I wish, stop trying to "protect" me from all the world's "evils".
As an aside, the really scary thing in all this is that it proves that there are people out there who would welcome Big Brother with open arms, so as to supervise every moment of our lives and keep all the "bad things" from view. Not even government officials and politicians or anyone else "in power", but just regular, everyday folks.
I still don't see where the studio is losing out. They're getting the full price for each editted version sold. Do you think that a family has the right to take a new DVD they paid full price for to a company to have them edit it so it's safe for their children is in the wrong? They are not advertising it and reselling it as their own version.
Do you think it should be legal for one movie studio to copy a currently-in-theatres blockbuster that cost some other studio $100M to produce and market, and then to sell a trivially edited version to theatres at a fraction of the normal price?
If the studio is getting the full fees per ticket that they'd get for an uneditted, and as long as the theater playing it is not claiming to be the original producer of the film, then yes. If anything, allowing this would increase their sales a bit because people who would otherwise bypass a film would be more inclined to see it. If it came at the cost of the studio losing money, such as a small theater somewhere playing it without paying the film company for playing it, then the film company would be losing money, and that is when it would be wrong.
It's a girl!
This doesn't effect places like Walmart.
The records they carry are sanitized by the copyright holders... the labels. This suit refers to those who edit content without holding a copyright.
For the most part, this suit effects religious nuts who have been white washing rentals.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
That isn't what is going on here. Essentially, people are buying a DVD at FULL PRICE (from the company) and then paying this company to remove certain parts. The consumer received 2 copies--the original and the edited version.
It would be more to the effect of someone selling you a DVD and saying skip 00:11 to 00-15 and 1:10 to 1:15.
Thus, if they sell 1984 copies of Gladiator with the naughty bits omitted, then they buy 1984 copies from the movie production company first. Thus, it can be said they are only reselling the copy of the book that they themselves purchased and from which they ripped out naughty pages.
It could also be said that they bought 1984 copies, destroyed them, and in their place sold altered copies. Remember, they're not buying the copies of Gladiator, they are buying a license to Gladiator, which doesn't include the right to make derivative works.
At any rate, the way to go about this would be to design a special DVD player which wouldn't play normal movies unless they also had some kind of storage media inserted into them containing cryptographically signed data on which parts to skip over. That way, you could sell the original movie filled with nudity and kids wouldn't be able to play it unless they also inserted the media that instructed the player how to skip over that nudity.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
It's because the other companies (such as the wal) have enough purchasing power to make the record company release a "clean" version. If the video stores in question were actually a 300 billion dollar chain, they could have just asked the studios nicely for a "clean" version and gotten it.
The service they ruled to be illegal was one that made modifications to a copyrighted work for those who owned a copy of it.
This ruling limits the ways in which a person can enjoy content they've legitimately purchased. Now, I know that some people are against this because it censors the movies, but I think this is bad because it gives the copyright holders too much power. Sure, this time it's the naughty bits and maybe they're just prudes not to watch it, but the same logic could, in theory, be extended to say that you can't "censor" the advertisements from your TV recordings.
You may well think that they're wrong for wanting to do that to the work, but I say that it's their right to appreciate it in any damn way they please, and if the author doesn't like that, too bad--as far as I'm concerned, they can take their "art" and shove it up their ass (knowing Holleywood, that's where they pulled it from in the first place).
Actually, that is exactly what was overridden.
They wanted someone to pre-edit them and take out the sex and violence and leave them with a clean version. Something that network television does every day.
I guess now, their only options are to
a) not buy the entertainment.
b) elect politicians who make it legal or who make the depicted acts illegal.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I still don't see where the studio is losing out.
Creative control.
If the studio is getting the full fees per ticket that they'd get for an uneditted, and as long as the theater playing it is not claiming to be the original producer of the film, then yes.
Well it isn't. You have to wait for copyright to expire before you do that. It's their right to edit a movie or not.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
After all, who is it that has problems with movies rated R?
- Children
- Mentally challenged people (see children)
- Bible-thumping ultra-religious types
As far as the children are concerned, the parents should be parents and screen what their young children watch (you know, like a parent). When you are talking about the different between PG13 and R, is it really that bad that your 16 year old saw a boobie for 0.75seconds? Is it going to warp him? If it does, see the mentally challenged people. As for the ultra-religious types, something tells me that they won't be interested in the type of movies that border on PG13-R. They would rather watch a movie that is condoned by their church instead of looking at evil, sinful stuff like the rest of us.When it comes down to it, if you are offended by contents that 99% of adults don't even smirk at, you should be researching your film choices very very very very carefully. If you see something bad you just might go insane. As for the children, parents should be parents and take control of the information that their children consume. If you can't, you shouldn't be a parent.
Space for rent, inquire within
>>Do you think it should be legal for one movie studio to copy a currently-in-theatres blockbuster that cost some other studio $100M to produce and market, and then to sell a trivially edited version to theatres at a fraction of the normal price?
Yes, if the second studio buys one full price of admission from the original studio's release for each customer who views the edited version. Again, the original studio gets all of the money they would have gotten anyways.
I can see how this violates the law, but I fail completely to see who is harmed.
Sounds analogous, in the ethical, if not perhaps the legal sense.
But, it's not at all obvious to me that such is a bad idea, especially if instead of removing pages at random you choose to remove pages so as to modify the content of the text.
Consider the following (admittedly rather extreme) thought experiment.
A neo-NAZI organization starts a business that buys World War II history books written by legitimate scholars, excises every passage that refers to the Jewish holocaust, throws a sticker that says "expurgated by Some Guy" on the cover, and then stocks bookstore shelves with them.
One would expect that the original authors to rage at that sort of thing. It's easy to see why: their name and their work is being used to push an agenda which they find offensive. In a case like this, removing material fundamentally changes the content of the work and perverts its intent.
Now, one might argue that the "naughty bits are bad" agenda is less dangerous and offensive than the "the Jewish holocaust never happened" agenda. (I'd have to agree, although I find the former pretty damned offensive.) But it's not at all clear how one ought to distinguish between those two in a systematic way. In any case where someone feels strongly enough about specific content to make publishing a censored version worthwhile, I guarantee you can find at least a hand full of authors and artists who are passionately of the opinion that such censorship perverts their work.
The only consistent way to prevent such extreme abuse is to prevent anyone from distributing censored versions of a work without the author's consent. (Note that I'm not talking about transformative works where it's clear that something is being sampled and used to create something new. That's a very different issue.)
This is the reason why you cannot skip the advertisements on some DVDs now. If you've already purchased the movie, you shouldn't have to watch advertisements about it. Movie companies should take a page from computer software: "Purchase the full version to remove this ad." If you've bought something, you own it. If I want to use my copy of Top Gun to take baked potatos out of the oven, that's my prerogative.
I think you're begging the question:
You assume the distribution of the edited films was a violation of copyright. This may seem obvious to you, but the law is rarely black and white. This was surely one of the questions of the case. The judge's explanation of his decision in terms of "irreparable injury to . . . creative artistic expression" indicates a specific reason why he was inclined to find that way.
I am no lawyer, but this looks to me like an expansion of copyright. "Reading in" protections like this (a practice disparagingly called judicial activism when folks don't like the results) has tremendously expanded the scope of copyright over the years. From a law originally based on the economic motivation of promoting the production of creative works, it has been transformed into a right of exclusive control over expression and culture.
Personally, I think Hollywood's stance is transparently hypocritical. It's absurd to argue that films produced by many people at great cost are somehow a pure form of creative expression (were such a thing even possible). At every level they are designed as profit-making vehicles. Hollywood is, in effect, claiming that they have the right to allow market forces to influence their works, but no-one else does.
James Boyle provides an explanation in Shamans, Software and Spleens: he argues that rulings like this can be understood in terms of the myth of the original author who creates great works ex nihilo. Judge Matsch's comments certainly fit the theory. It's too bad. Myths, even when there's some truth in them, shouldn't make law.
That's hilarious coming from a Mormon. If I want to buy alcohol on Sunday, how does that affect you? If I want to marry a person of the same sex, how does that affect you? If my girlfriend needs/wants an abortion, how does that affect you? If I want to have sex before marriage, how does that affect you?
Christians are constantly pushing their views onto others and pressuring law makers to criminalize behavior they disagree with, even when it has nothing to do with them. So it seems a bit ironic that you would use "If I don't want to see it, how does it affect you?' in your defense of this.
This was a clear case of a commercial company profiting from derivative works of copyrighted material. That's exactly the thing copyright law was created to prevent.
Maybe not
I think I'm about to overdose on the stench of hypocrisy emanating from the DGA. These clowns have no problem with distributors and television networks hacking their masterpieces into kibble, to fit in more commercials and eliminate the naughty bits, but if someone in Utah does it, it's an attack on their so-called "artistic integrity"? To mutilate an old joke, we know they are whores, they are just haggling over the price.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
The difference is subcategorizing the CD's. If all CD's where not allowed to be sold to minors, it would not be different to booze or ammo. But because all ammo is forbidden and only a few CD's, it is difficult to keep a list of CD's wich should not be sold to minors. That would take to much time at the desk.
But I'm not an American, so my question is: do they sell both versions, or just the censored one?
- Unomi -
It would be illegal even if you were to buy a book for each copy you sold. It may seem silly to many, but that's how copyright works. You would be creating and distributing a derivitive work, and you need the copyright holder's permission to do that, no matter what. Just because you bought their stuff doesn't give you that right.
In the end, it's important that it remains that way for OSS, becuase that's what gives the GPL legal force. If you were allowed to sell s distributed work without permission, provided you legally obtained and destroyed a copy for each work you distributed, GPL software would lack any enforcement ability. People could simply get your software for free legally, and then distribute modified versions. They might have to go through the cermonial process of downloading a copy for each one they sold and deleting it, but it would all be legal.
However, they don't have that right. Even though you give your work away for free, they still ahve to respect your copyright. Via the GPL you give them the right to distribute derivitve works, but only if they agree to some conditions (like opening their code). That they got the copy legally or paid you isn't relivant, copyright mandidates they can't distribute derivitives without permission, and your price on that permission is spelled out in the GPL.
Because without this, the GPL would have no teeth. Here's why:
What the censors were arguing is that if you obtain a legal copy of something, you've got the right to make and distribute a derivitve work from it. They said it was legal, so long as for every derivitive version, you obtained a legal orignal and destroyed it.
Ok so perhaps you think that's fair but now let's take the fantasy world where that's the case. I'm form EvilCorp and I want to use Linux for my product but I don't want to hand out my modifications. No problem, what I do is for every product I make, I download the source and then destroy it. Or maybe, just to make sure that there's money involved I buy a legal copy form one of those places that sells CDs cheap. I'm 100% legit at this point. The law says I can distribute a derivitive for every orignal I legally obtain and destroy, and I'm doing just that. The GPL loses all it's teeth.
What makes the GPL work is precisley what this ruling found: Buying a copy of something doesn't give you the right to make and distribute a derivitive work. Just because you chose to give someone your source code, doesn't mean they can jsut go make their own versions of your software. Copyright still applys. They need your permission to do that. The GPL then gives that permission, but in exchange for agreement to limits on what they must do. Doesn't matter how many copies of your product they buy/downlaod, they agree to the GPL or they don't get to distribute.
So this ruling is not only legally correct with the intent of copyright, but is also very important to the GPL.
Did you just actually say that moviemakers wouldn't include unnecessary nudity and violence that isn't integral to conveying the plot? Have you actually WATCHED any movies in the last ten years? Moviemakers absolutely include nudity and violence that has nothing to do with the movie other than increasing the age rating and drawing audiences who want to see that stuff. It seems like every moron wants to make laws these days. Since when did we need laws to tell people that they can't NOT WATCH something.
It's not (just) about money. The "cleaned" movies are bootlegs, and unauthorised derivative works. You can't just reedit and publish your own version of someone else's books, movies, music, regardless of your motives. But getting back to money; if they allowed they could hardly forbid people making backups of their own DVDs, format shifting, etc; practices which they are busily trying to criminalise. You may well assume the studios are against it for the latter reason, supported by the directors and other creative people for the former. You may remember the outcries when Ted Turner started "colorising" black and white movies.
In the United States only the copyright holder may authorize or create a derivative work. Cutting out the naughty bits of a movie is probably considered an abridgement, which is a derivative work under copyright law. So in that case an artist does have a legal right to decide the approved form for his work.
If I want to buy alcohol on Sunday, how does that affect you?
It doesn't, so shopping hours & alcohol should be unregulated.
If I want to marry a person of the same sex, how does that affect you?
If affects me because marraige is a social institution, by definition. If you & your partner were isolated on an island, the concept of 'marriage' would be mute. Other people (aka society) interacting with you forms part of the definition of 'marriage'.
So, my answer is, of course you should be able to 'marry' any consenting adult, but you should not be able to force me to recognise your relationship as marriage.
If my girlfriend needs/wants an abortion, how does that affect you?
It affects me in the same way as if your girlfirend wanted to kill her newborn. It would be murder. So this argument reduces to when does human life begin?. When does the protection from murder that accompanies the recognition of human life begin?
Speaking as a father who watched my children being born, I'm confident that my children met any reasonable definition of human life before they were delivered through the birth canal.What about earlier in the pregnancy? I can't prove that life begins at any particular moment - I can argue & suggest various key development thresholds, but this is a matter for society, who validly should want to prevent murder in their midst.
If I want to have sex before marriage, how does that affect you?
Provided you're doing it in private, it doesn't affect me at all. Doing it in front of my children is another matter...
Christians are constantly pushing their views onto others and pressuring law makers to criminalize behavior they disagree with, even when it has nothing to do with them.
Agreed, and this should stop. Similarly, all forms of state coercion should stop.
The fiscal rights of the Hollywood studios were not hurt. They got to sell exactly that many original printed DVDs. You had to bring your genuine copy to private "clean-watch" companies, who took the original and gave a burned, shortened DVD in exchange. Of course you had to pay a fee for this service.
All this is fair and creative in the best capitalist sense. If there was no interest in morallly elevated DVD versions, nobody would bring their genuine DVDs for sanitized replacement and the said companies would go bankrupt. But they do not, because there is need for their services. Their services do not hurt public moral or public order or the health of the society, therefore cannot be criminalized or banned.
Otherwise, the idea of injuction is alien to anglo-saxon law and very evil. It was only invented in the 18th century due to reign of corrupt kings and cromwellian anarchy. The only right naturally invested in courts is to award fitting damages, they have no right to ban people to do anything. The judge could only rule that the clean-watch enterprises owe a percent of their income to Hollywood studios, but not ban them. Bans are only possible via legislative action, otherwise the separation of powers is violated.
The SCOTUS will crush the circuit ruling because it hurts the 1st amendment balance between feeedom of speech and freedom of religion. In fact, cave paintings show the prehistoric men already had supernatural beliefs before they were able to speak, therefore freedom of religion is more basic than freedom of speech and shall enjoy stronger protection.
Finally, we need to face the fact that most Hollywood moguls and music brasses are homosexual anal penetrators and / or paedophils. They also abuse controlled substances, participate in sex orgies and bilge drinking. Seeing all this immorality, no wonder film moguls hate the mormon people of Utah, who practice christianity according to strict regulations. Any time they see a latter day saint, they are reminded of their sins and the fate they will face in hell. They want christians to disappear so they can indulge without worry. But it is not the job of a judge to fulfill that dirty desire.
Try selling your customised versions of Windows XP, with that pesky activation cut out; Internet Explorer replaced by Firefox, etc.; see how long you stay in business regardless of whether you bought a regular copy for each copy you sell.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
Moral issues aside, willfully engaging in behavior contrary to basic biological drives (reproduction) indicates something seriously wrong with an individual.
So you're obviously opposed to birth control, computers (except strictly as a work tool), all forms of entertainment, and anything people do that doesn't directly support having a child or raising a child. Wait, why're you on Slashdot anyway? I highly doubt (all jokes aside, even) that'll help you reproduce.
"Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you."
You're not really much of a liberatarian, then, are you?
As far as abortion and gay marriage go, I do not agree with the stated libertarian position.
That being said, a general libertarian principle is that have the right to live as free from other's coercion as possible. With regards to abortion, this raises an interesting question. If the baby isn't really a person, anti-abortion legislation is infringing on the right of the mother to kill the mass of cells inside her. On the other hand, if the aforementioned mass of cells is a person with rights, then killing him would be the ultimate act of coercion, and his rights would "trump" the rights of the mother, just as the right of the victim outweighs the rights of the murderer.
I hold my beliefs, and for the most part, I agree with the libertarian party. I am in favor of less taxes, less government, less welfare, and less restrictions. That being said, I believe an "unborn mass of cells" to be a person, and as such feel compelled to work towards protecting those who can not do so themselves. I'm not arguing for a ban on homosexuality, but I certainly don't want the government I fund creating programs designed to provide benefits for things detrimental to society. That applies to homosexual marriage just as much as welfare for freeloaders, or a giant ineffective wall between us and Mexico.
I would imagine that whatever party you subscribe to doesn't align perfectly with your beliefs either (unless, of course, you're an registered independent).
Wow, that is fricking **KINKY**!
Certainly, my right to punch ends at my nose. But, how does getting an abortion physically harm you? How does it "punch you in the nose" so to speak?
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Actually, it wouldn't be difficult. Depending on the item scanned at the register, it pops up a screen saying "is the customer over 17/18/21? Y/N" and won't let them continue with the sale until they hit the Y or N. this happens on tons of various items. for example, you can't even buy PB Blaster without breaking out the driver's license.
...this is just plain stupid. A decision such as this should be applicable to all copyright work so try the mental exercise of applying it to a book as it is the oldest form of copyrighted media. You buy a book and a pen. You scribble out a few words and perhaps write in a couple of your own sentences. You sell the book on. Have you breached copyright? Perhaps, if you claimed that the whole work was produced by you but I didn't hear anyone saying they wrote the book / film whatever. Yeah they defaced the work and sold it on but that's a totally different matter and not something for the courts to be involved in.
Going back to the book example. What if your kid scribbled on the pages? What if your dog ate part of the book (that happened to me once while at school)? As far as I am concerned the copyright holder gets to sell the work to you once. What you do with it after that is you own concern.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
I would agree with you to a certain degree, but who's to say that a particular scene is or isn't essential to the artistic vision of the film? I'm a huge believer that movies these days are way too quick to promote aggression and violence, but I can recall quite a few instances where violence was ultimately ESSENTIAL to the aesthetic and philosophical values behind the film. Can you imagine getting across the nuanced ideas of Fight Club or Natural Born Killers without any aggression or violence? Both, I believe to be grade A films that use violence as a tool in which to understand aspects of human nature and society. These are only two examples, but there are many others. Now, for every one of these films, I will agree that there are 50 others that are totally out of line, but it's really not my decision to make, or yours, or anyone elses, for that matter, which scenes are essential to the overall vision or not.
Remember that hollywood is, for the most part, simply a reflection of the current societal trends. If movies that portray graphic violence become more popular and lucrative for producers to make, then that really says something about the direction our society is taking, and I do worry about that. But there are much better ways of countering these societal trends then banning movies... if anything, that just makes it worse. It's a slippery slope, just like banning litterature, best not to start at all. Good education and the teaching of using ones own good judgement will allow consumers to make those decisions for themselves.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
Finally, the same-sex marriage. Moral issues aside, willfully engaging in behavior contrary to basic biological drives (reproduction) indicates something seriously wrong with an individual.
Finally, fast-food restaurants. Moral issues aside, willfully engaging in behaviour contrary to basic biological drives (nutrition) indicates something seriously wrong with an individual.
Finally, the tobacco industry. Moral issues aside, willfully engaging in behaviour contrary to basic biological drives (breathing) indicates something seriously wrong with an individual.
Finally, couch-patatoing . Moral issues aside, willfully engaging in behaviour contrary to basic biological drives (exercising) indicates something seriously wrong with an individual.
My point is that people do things that someone could argue "contrary to basic biological drives" all the time. Just for fun, for pleasure, or just because they want to. And you don't have the right to tell other people who they should marry to or what they should do with their lives.
And as a side note, homosexual behaviour in animals has been observed many times in the wild. I'm sure that you know and that you're conveniently ignoring the fact that it is a perfectly normal behaviour, biologically and psychologically speaking, regardless of what current-day society might think.
My site
So quit taking the unrated movies and editing them into Disney movies. Safe movies exist, so buy those instead. Don't support the hack editors illicit dealings. How can anyone possibly defend this as being legal? So...you make a movie...I buy a copy of it and hack n slash it up to be what I want people to see...and then I resell it with your name on it. How about I take Disney movies and edit a bunch of violence and sex scenes into them and sell them as Disney movies. You think Disney wouldn't be crawling up my ass in a matter of minutes with a horde of lawyers? You think I would have people spring to my defense the same way? Probably not...but ultimately in the legal sense I did the exact same thing that these editors are doing.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
While it won't affect me, the person wanting to watch a movie, it does affect the person who made it. They had some idea on their mind, a story, a plot that the movie should tell. When you now remove scenes from the movie, you can alter the story quite a bit. Now, this does not apply to many movies, where the gore scenes are little more than eye catchers that don't really tell anything about the story itself, but sometimes it can be very important.
Let's try a drastic example. And yes, I'm gonna stereotype to the extreme.
Let's take a movie, set in the southeast of America in the beginning 20th century. A black human rights activist does not "get" the messages some white power dickheads give him, so they go to his house while he's not there and slaughters his family. Cruelly. Be as graphic as you can imagine, up to the point where babies get eaten. In short: No questions remaining as to who's the bad guy.
Now, he comes home, finds his family murdered in the most cruel way and decides to go on a revenge spree. He knows who they are, and he kills them one by one in the most creative way possible. Police is puzzling for a long while what's going on, can't find out for a long, long time who might be doing it 'til they catch on, now of course they're all-white too and rather anti-black, and finally they find out who it is and they hunt him as he kills the last few ones, killing him just after he finished his revenge run.
The difference, when you cut out the gory scenes about his family, is that he has no reason for the killing spree. So the story alters dramatically.
Story with gore scenes: A black man, trying to fight for his right, takes revenge on the white power assholes that ripped his family apart, hunted by the white power police and still manages to get his revenge.
Story without gore scenes: A black human rights activist going insane and killing white people, while the police tries its best to bring him to justice.
Altering content has the power to change the movie completely. You can tell a completely different story when you cut away this, switch those scenes and so on. And this is where the danger lies in that.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I guess "free speech" ranks higher on the /. concerns than copyright issues.
The step from "edited for cleanness" to "edited for political acceptance" isn't that big. And neither is the step from "voluntary" to "mandatory" as it's been proven far too many times.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I don't like people who "scrub" movies, but I still think this ruling is bad. For millennia, art has progressed and evolved by taking some prior artist's work and modifying it, often in ways that the original artist didn't agree with. Except for possibly receiving financial compensation for a limited time for each copy created, artists should not have the power to control what happens to their creations after they have released them to the public.
I'll attempt to answer, arguing from a Christian Liberterian viewpoint...
i.e. Liberty when it suits me. Except that isn't really liberty at all. Anyone who is following the dogma of any religion is incapable of understanding what true liberties are.
It doesn't, so shopping hours & alcohol should be unregulated.
Tell that to all the people whos lives have been ruined by alcohol. Both drinkers and non drinkers.
So, my answer is, of course you should be able to 'marry' any consenting adult, but you should not be able to force me to recognise your relationship as marriage.
Yet the rest of us are forced to recognise any half-baked nonsense you choose to call a religion. Lots of consenting adults running about threatening our freedoms, and all under constitutional protection. If asked to choose between this and two adults entering a civil union, I know which side I'd come down on.
It affects me in the same way as if your girlfirend wanted to kill her newborn.
It doesn't affect me to anywhere near the same degree. The fact is, most people, when it comes right down to it, aren't really ready to accept underdeveloped embryos as fellow citizens. Which isn't to say that abortion isn't a tough decision. It's a tough one that a lot of women have to make. But ninty-nine times out of a hundred, it's the right decision, and everyone, the mother, the father, society, know it was the right decision. Sometimes, these decisions have to be made. And if asked to choose between people making tough decisions and people being forced to bring children to term, I know which side I'd come down on.
Provided you're doing it in private, it doesn't affect me at all. Doing it in front of my children is another matter...
Well, if you wern't watching them at the time, that's your problem.
Agreed, and this should stop. Similarly, all forms of state coercion should stop.
The state is granted certain powers of coercion. Those powers are necessary. I would rather have a state, beholden to a constitution, with powers of coercion, rather than private clubs and organisations with powers of coercion dictating my life and how I can live it.
I'm from Ireland. We tried it the "Christian Way(TM)". This country was a long running disaster, under de facto church control. I couldn't even begin to go into the extent to which the population was oppressed by a theocractic tyranny. I don't have time for "Christian" viewpoints, or any religious doublespeak. I had a taste of that once, and I'm not eager for another lash. No one should be.
May the Maths Be with you!
Let's hope at the scrubbing companies at least had a patent on this idea. That way they can make their money back ten fold when the movie industry offers the same service 6 months from now.
My only concern is that if edited versions are not available, and the only version available is the purely unedited version, might that cause DVD producers to be more conservative with what they put in, in the first place? (It's a vague parallel to the rebate story posted earlier on SlashDot; if there isn't breakage [unfiled rebates], then the overall amount of rebates will likely drop. Sometimes by purifying and simplifying the process, you can cause unintended effects.)
In general, I applaud the ruling, but worry it might reduce the quality of the original distributions.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
And dont forget that every biological argument against homosexual marrage also applies to hetero married couples who are intentionally childless.
He didn't say that it was hard to KNOW WHEN to card. I think his point was that the actual carding would be on a much larger scale with CDs. Walmart is the kind of place that spends a lot of money shaving a few seconds off their credit card authorizations. They do NOT want to add even a minute to any transaction if they don't have to. Plus, you know how people get pissy if they are over 21 but get carded for booze? Imagine all the irate teenagers who get carded for something even sillier. They probably figure it's not worth the hassle.
The player's owners just download the scripts and can safely watch any movie.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Cleanflix, at one point, offered a "sanitized" version of Enemy at the Gates. (I can't confirm if they still do, as their site is slashdotted.)
So, by them, it's okay for kids to see guys getting mown down crossing a river, blown to pieces by artillery shells, and executed by Red Army commissars -- but God forbid they should be exposed to a couple minutes of filthy sniper sex.
What a fucking backwards country.
You've answered this from a largely (or purely) libertarian perspective, and I think your response is valid. Of course this logically implies that marriage should not be a legal entity at all, which is the main problem here.
That's the problem with the abortion argument, it all just boils down to that one belief most of the time. I personally believe the most pragmatic solution is to have abortion legalised, because if it is not legal it will still go on and more people will end up hurt from poor practices. That said, I'm one of those that believes that "human life" begins at birth (or thereabouts) so I'm predisposed towards legalised abortions in the first place.
I don't know what your implication with this one is, but we already have laws about public indecency, and for additional protection I feel it's right that the responsibility lies with the parent.
Obviously they're not going to. I think a lot of non-religious people get exasperated specifically because Christian laws seem so arbitrary to them, though, which I think is why there's so much complaint about these things in general.
In other words, you advocate all liberties except religious ones.
Yes, because we all know that "the Christian Way(TM)" is represented solely by what went on under the conservative Irish Catholic Church in Ireland for a couple of centuries, and that corruption, brutally oppressive British rule, and scores of other factors had nothing whatsoever to do with the tyranny that happened.
No, just the ones that support your highly prejudiced view of religion.
Man, I'm on your side, and I'm here to tell you you've got to come up with a better argument than "my extremely limited experience with Christianity is globally representative of all forms of religious expression".
And yet another view, this time from a non christian Libertarian...
Tell that to all the people whos lives have been ruined by alcohol. Both drinkers and non drinkers.
Prohibition does not work. The keys to combating drug and alcohol abuse are education and treatment.
On the subject of gay marriage.
Marriage is a social and religious construct. The government has no buisiness regulating or being involved in the religious definition of marriage. Government has other duties to focus on. The government can allow a civil union (say between two human beings) which would allow joint ownership of property, insurance, child custody, etc. That is where the government's responsibility for marriage ends. All marriages would be a simple civil union in the eyes of the government. What you choose to call it is your business. You want to call it a marriage, that's your perogative.
On religion in government, particularly in Ireland.
Ireland is a great example of what happens when you mix religion with government. Even to this day, Ireland is divided on religious lines and it is quite rediculous that is has gotten to this point. The founding fathers of the US had it right. Church and State must be separate. What we really need is government by reason. Right now we have a mostly reactionary government. They just react to what is happening, usually violently or impulsively instead of working out the reasonable course of action. It is a good sign people are beginning to push back, and some even to realize that neither the Republicans nor the Democrats are capable of reasonable leadership anymore. We need leaders who will work in a reasonable and logical way to meet the needs of the people, and a total revisiting of all US law. Anything that is outdated, unreasonable or obviously bought as political favor needs to be chucked or rewritten in a reasonable way. The court system needs to be cleaned up as well. We need to make it possible for the average joe to understand the laws and defend himself if necessary. Court shouldn't be some huge mystery that you have to pay someone $300 an hour or more to deal with for you.
And that is just for starters... this country needs help, and only putting people who can think and reason logically in power will save us at this point.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
5 minutes before a child is born, it's a human being but it's still legal to abort it. Even, if everything except the child's head has emerged from the mother, it's legal to abort it.
This is as close to complete and utter bullshit as you can get without actually deliberately lying.
It is legal to abort a child in such circumstances if and only if that is the only possible way to ensure the survival of the mother. It is not legal for a woman 5 minutes away from giving birth to turn round and say "oh shit, I just realised I don't want this kid, please kill it for me": any doctor who did that would be committing a serious crime.
There is no such thing as full-term abortion-on-demand. There simply is not. No such thing. Doesn't exist. Sorry, but you genuinely are getting worked up over nothing.
As a previous poster noted, without control over derivative works, there is no GPL. Don't forget, there's also some Creative Commons licenses that specify no derivative works. I'd say most Slashdotters don't object to copyright law as a concept, just the current implementations of it (overlong terms, lack of fair use, assaults on new technology, etc.)
The test should be - does this use of copyright law promote or destroy creativity? Censorship is not creativity, therefore it does not inspire people to demand an exception. Contrast this with the Grey Album - another derivative work, but one whose suppression destroys creativity - and therefore an exception would be desirable.
Well put, but misplaced. I absolutely care about getting the full version of the film on my DVD, and I care about the producers, directors, etc, getting propper credit for their work.
However, my understanding is that these edited films were well labled as modified and that patrons of these companies had a very good understanding that they weren't getting the theatrical release. Assuming that's the case, then I have a very hard time understanding what the problem is. This ruling is exactly the equivilant of me buying a book, then ripping out some pages I dislike, then reselling the book, clearly labled as missing pages, to a third party. Making that illegal is silly.
Oh, and by the way, what does this say about DJ remixes? People enjoy modified works. As long as the modification is happening on a per-unit basis and eveyone gets properly credited and paid, why are we trying to restrict this.
TW
Funny, I thought it was because they saw the VOLUNTARY editing of your own PERSONAL copy of a movie to be a "fair use" of the purchased content that the content creators wanted to restrict in order to generally reign in fair use.
Geez, am I the only one who sees this? The services I read about allowed you to BUY AN ORIGINAL COPY of the movie, and then because you also opted to PAY for their services they would MAKE you an edited copy while sometimes preserving and returning the untouched original. The decision that it's not OK for a service to make a copy to suit a customer's needs in that case is another step towards "licensing" content instead of OWNING it.
(To prevent comments from going off on tangents, I offer this disclaimer: I would not watch or buy an edited movie, I like to watch deleted scenes and all that kind of supplementary material; I support a customer's right to do whatever they want with their copy short of distributing or misrepresenting it. Main source for information the "sanitizing" process: Washington Post article)
[command INSERTWITTYQUIP failed: insufficient wit]
5 minutes before a child is born, it's a human being but it's still legal to abort it.
You fail to mention that it's only legal when the health of the woman is at stake. Take your strawman and go home. The vast majority of abortions involve a blob of cells.
To back you up: another one of those 'Mormons'.
I think that as a group the LDS ('Mormons') are incredibly aware of the effect of reactionary laws designed to garner political power: witness the Extermination Order signed by Governor Boggs of Missouri in the 1800's. It essentially made it legal to kill Mormons without any type of reason other than their religion. Wholly unconstitutional, and even if you are a religion-bashing atheist, you should recognize that this is a very dangerous thing to do.
Now to clear up a few points: Marriage is, as stated, a socio-religious construct and should be treated as such. The only value to having government recognize it is if there is a benefit to society. Some people (including many in the church I attend) will argue that children raised in a two-parent heterosexual home are more psychologically healthy than those who are not. Although there have been 'scientific' studies of this topic, I have yet to see one that really had a handle on the topic because the heart of the matter lies not in determining the effects of environment on one particular child, but in the following problems:
1) separating environment from genetics (this may be impossible, truth be told);
2) defining psychological health in a non-binary method (harder than it sounds--I don't think anyone has yet done this beyond the GAF (Global Assessment of Functioning), which has serious limitations and was developed for use with mentally ill patients, not to rank order normal humans);
3) removing researcher bias (all researchers have a bias--if you meet someone researching a socially or politcally charged issue that claims otherwise, they are likely lying; learn the bias of every researcher before you take their research at any value);
4) controlling all of the other relevant variables and still have a sample size worth mentioning (it is easy in some studies to examine more variables than you have participants, especially if you have a really tough question like this one where getting participants can be tricky--too small of a sample and you are essentially defining each participant as a predictor of their own behavior, which is not a good situation).
In the end the only solution I can see for the question of gay marriage is to remove government from the question of marriage. Ultimately it comes down to a question of religion: if you can find a religion that advocates gay marriage then you are free to get married under the auspices of that church. Otherwise, form a civil union and the government should (but doesn't yet) recognize that as legally binding. The same should apply to heterosexual marriages: these are non-binding in the legal sense, if you want to have the state recognize your legal status, you will need a civil union as well. Of course this requires changing the law in a wholly undramatic and logical manner, so it is unlikely to happen anytime soon. More likely is that gay marriage will be legalized, and those of us who are religious will have to accept something that we find morally offensive, even though there exists a perfectly logical and sane alternative that actually provides more equality to those who are clamoring for gay marriage in the first place.
Prohibition serves us in no way, and likewise the war on drugs in largely ineffective. Are there some who would use crack and herione if _only_ they were legal? Sure, but they are a minority, and I suspect that many companies would continue to use drug testing as a part of the employment agreement, thus making it impractical for a good number of people (think airline pilots: show up high and you're fired, no questions--show evidence of using recreational pharmaceuticals, and you're fired).
Religion in government will never work. The only time it could work is if it were so obvious that the religion represented the truth of the universe that no one could logically or reasonably deny that it were true. This has never happened, although some Christians predict that this will be the exact situation whe
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
I mostly agree, but would like to point out that the "two human beings" requirement is unnecessary as well. Civil unions should be allowed between any number of any kind of beings, as long as they're competant to make legal decisions (which would disallow non-emancipated children, farm animals, etc.). There would have to be some restriction (prehaps a requirement of cohabitation) somewhere, though, to prevent the status from being abused.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
"...why should society provide such advantages to behavior which it finds to be detrimental to it?"
Society hasn't found homosexual behavior to be "detrimental to it", it's nothing more than prejudice. Given that marriage is an artificial construct created by society, it should be obvious to you that homosexuals desire the same artificially constructed benefits of marrriage that others do and that were created by society for that very reason. Obvously, "all men created equal" means something different to you.
If marriage is an artificial construct of society, why does sex before marriage seem stupid to you? Did we need to create an artificial relationship before you could reproduce?
Homosexual sex for a gay person is a basic biological drive. That's why there ARE gay people. It's not a choice.
"If I want to marry a person of the same sex, how does that affect you?
If affects me because marraige is a social institution, by definition. If you & your partner were isolated on an island, the concept of 'marriage' would be mute. Other people (aka society) interacting with you forms part of the definition of 'marriage'.
So, my answer is, of course you should be able to 'marry' any consenting adult, but you should not be able to force me to recognise your relationship as marriage."
The social recognition of marriage already exists for gays. Gays get married in ceremonies all the time and they don't really care whether all members of society recognize it or not. No one knows better than gays how to accept rejection.
Straight marriages typically consist of a ceremony and a marriage license. Gays get the ceremony but not the license. What gays want from marriage is the license and the the LEGAL benefits that brings. These benefits have nothing to to with marriage as a social institution but rather are benefits specifically granted to some members of society and denied others.
The proper solution to the gay marriage issue is to do away with legal marriage altogether. No need for the government to interfer in that matter. If couples wish to engage themselves in legal contracts, gay or straight, they can do so through a common means. Call it marriage or civil union, it is inevitable in a free and equal society.
If racial prejudice is a social institution (which it was and still is) does that make it right to legally discriminate against racial minorities?
Allow me to rebut from an atheist viewpoint.
It doesn't, so shopping hours & alcohol should be unregulated.
Tell that to all the people whos lives have been ruined by alcohol. Both drinkers and non drinkers.
So, anything that can potentially harm someone should be illegal? My father was an alcoholic. I know how hard that can be first hand. But that just means that I believe there should be more help for alcoholics, more early prevention when it starts (because by the time anyone tried to help him, he was too far gone). It doesn't mean that alcohol shouldn't be sold on the Christian holy day. It means there should be more to prevent alcoholism every day of the week. Blue laws don't stop alcoholism.
So, my answer is, of course you should be able to 'marry' any consenting adult, but you should not be able to force me to recognise your relationship as marriage.
Yet the rest of us are forced to recognise any half-baked nonsense you choose to call a religion. Lots of consenting adults running about threatening our freedoms, and all under constitutional protection. If asked to choose between this and two adults entering a civil union, I know which side I'd come down on.
Here I will agree. If I'm forced to recognize the Conservative Christian version of mairrage, why shouldn't they be forced to recognize the Gay version of mairrage?
It affects me in the same way as if your girlfirend wanted to kill her newborn.
It doesn't affect me to anywhere near the same degree. The fact is, most people, when it comes right down to it, aren't really ready to accept underdeveloped embryos as fellow citizens. Which isn't to say that abortion isn't a tough decision. It's a tough one that a lot of women have to make. But ninty-nine times out of a hundred, it's the right decision, and everyone, the mother, the father, society, know it was the right decision. Sometimes, these decisions have to be made. And if asked to choose between people making tough decisions and people being forced to bring children to term, I know which side I'd come down on.
The Christian poster is right. It comes down to a question of when does life begin. Let's say a child is born premature. Is it OK to kill the child? Of course not. What if it was so premature abortion would still be legal? If it's not OK to kill the child (morally, of course, not legally), why? The child is just as developed as it would have been inside the womb. Can you argue that somehow its physical location (in a womb vs out of one) determines if it's alive?
What if technology advances to the point that premature babies can be reimplanted in the womb to continue gestation? Can you just put the child back in the womb and have it be OK to abort again?
The question is developmental one. Don't dismiss his claim just because it's a Christian saying it. The idea that life is somehow based on location is absurd from a logical perspective. Now, where is that line drawn, the point that it is developmentally no longer a collection of cells and is now a human life? That's a Big Question, one I don't have an easy answer for. But to dismiss the idea that when abortion should be legal and when it shouldn't is not a question based on the developmental state of the child is absurd.
I have a very hard time understanding what the problem is.
Yeah, then be warned, I shall edit your post:
I absolutely care about getting a good release. I have a very hard unit. eveyone gets properly paid.
These are you own words, in the right order. I just edited out a few of them.
I hope that helps you understand what the problem is.
You can't take the sky from me...
Sex before marriage seems stupid to me [...] willfully engaging in behavior contrary to basic biological drives (reproduction) indicates something seriously wrong with an individual.
Marriage is contrary to the basic biological drive of fucking every attractive members of the opposite sex you can find.
You can't take the sky from me...
Why bother watching a movie at all if it has so many objectionable things to you that you have to buy this technology?
Capitalism does not lead to corruption, lack of character does.
The arguments against this are all silly semantics. So... what if I made myself an edited copy? What if I don't know how to do it so I pay a friend to do it? What if I just pay him to help me do it? What if I just pay him to use his equipment? If it is not illegal for me to edit MY MOVIE that I OWN, then why is it illegal for me to pay someone to edit it for me? It's like paying someone to rip pages out of a book for me, or eat half of my big mac so I don't get obese. I paid for the whole thing. I don't want part of it. Sure, it may not agree with Ronald's artistic vision of clogging my arteries full of special sauce, but that's not his problem anymore since I bought it.
That, and the fact that you aren't bypassing any security features in order to alter the content.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Because most movies that are otherwise worth watching have a fairly low ratio of "naughty bits" to actual content. If you have a two-hour movie, from which you excise maybe five minutes, then you still have a movie worth watching. A lot of the time, these things are simply gratuitous --- they contribute nothing to the plot.
Granted, there are also quite a few movies that have very little aside from naughty bits, but not all of them. I can think of many movies I'd like better if the gratuitous spurting blood scene or sex scene weren't there.
These guys that are editing movies aren't doing anything to deprive anyone else of the right to see the unedited version, nor are they doing anything to deprive the studios of profit. I can't see where the law should have any say whatsoever here.
Because often the sex or violence or profanity is gratuitous to the plot. It's almost axiomatic to state that sex and violence sells. Movie companies, interested in making top-dollar for their investors, don't shy away from pushing for scripts with sexier content, bigger explosions, and more realistic gore. Why should the viewer have to deal with the content which was inserted under pressure from the movie studios' profit motive? Do you have no recollection of how awkward it is to watch a sex scene in a movie with your parents? Parents don't want to have to deal with that kind of content when renting movies that are heavily marketed to their kids. And there are plenty of people who just don't care to see gore unnecessary to the plot.
(That said, I would love to watch Reservoir Dogs with the filter turned on. A really short film.)
The Rise and Fall of Online Community
Because wealth was the man's god. Read the entire story. Jesus asks him if he's kept all the commandments; he says "Yes". What's the first commandment? "You shall have no other gods before me". Jesus realised that money was the man's god, so he said "OK, then, give away all your money". The man went away sad, proving that he hadn't kept all the commandments.
The overall point of the story is not that we must do better at keeping God's commandments, but that salvation is by grace (God's undeserved favour in choosing sinners) and not by obeying the Law or by works (what you do). Because no-one can do that perfectly, as the rich young man proves.
Okay, how about this: if you want absolute moral rights to your work, you must be raised in a box and never have contact with outside culture. Then and only then will your works be yours. If by work, we mean "drooling and shitting yourself." Everything else is stolen. Ain't nothin' new under the sun. Everything artistic is a rip off of something else. That's why the US has the copyright system we do, to ensure that there are enough works in the public domain that artists can go on creating without infringing.
Let's take a little tumble down the slippery slope you have set up. Absolute "natural" rights (or the incredibly shortsighted tack our congress is taking by indefinite extension of copyright) leads to the state where every possible idea is owned, and no one can ever create without paying well-nigh incalculable royalties to bazillions of artists and their decadent heirs. Making art is like making a baby. You make it, you point it in the right direction, and you let go.
Now you and I probably wouldn't call television executives "artists." Yet they are creating artistic works, programs interspersed with commercials. According to them, those programs are meant to be viewed with commercials. You can see it in the pace and timing of the shows. Are we then destroying the artistic integrity of those shows by using DVRs and skipping the commercials? Skipping commercials is unauthorized editing. How is skipping commercials different than skipping violence or sex?
Let's even do away with commercial skipping as we are dealing with three different sets of "artists" e.g. the ones who made the show, the ones who made the commercial, and the ones who "artfully" combined the two into half hour and hour long segments. Let's just look at the pause button. I like it. Sometimes I have to go to the bathroom, sometimes I like to talk with my wife about the show (well, more often listen to what she says about the show...) But the artist never intended the show to be paused. Perhaps pausing the show ruins the dramatic tension they were trying to build. Should artists have the right to prohibit my use of the pause button? If not, why should they be able to prohibit the use of the fast forward button, which aside from the unauthorized copying is what we are really talking about.
I could go on one of my long winded "there are no such things as natural rights" rants, but I will spare you. Let's pull an Internet favorite and put it in terms of that damn "first they came for the blah blah" speach. First they came for the people who wanted to skip violence and sex, and I did not speak out because I damn well like violence and sex. Then they came for the people who wanted to skip commercials and I was pretty well hoist by my own petard, now wasn't I?
In short, I cannot reconcile thwe belief that commercial skipping is okay with the belief that editing out violence or sex for personal viewing is not okay. Either they are both okay or neither is.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I knew it was altered because I'd seen the movie before. The viewers who had not seen it before were warned that the movie was "adapted for television", but were not given information about the nature of the changes, were likely, well, perhaps you will find the word "misled" too strong, I don't, but let's not quibble on that point. The fact is that, as evidenced by many, many discussions after the first showing of Brazil on TV locally, it was clear that many viewers were in fact left confused.
I think the case of the parent post is a weaker example of this, but the principle still holds. Clearly the people who purchase the modified works are aware of the modifications. Nonetheless, there is nothing to prevent those modified works from being shown to other people, there is nothing to insure that the nature of the alterations being made is complete. Ergo, there is some potential damage to the economic value of the author, thus the existence of derivative works rules.
The public has a right to modify works for their own use.
You seem confused by two different tests that are both present in copyright law, both of which are not entirely black-and-white checkboxes. There is the question of whether you harm the economic interest of the author, which we've covered here so far. However, there is also the separate question of whether the personal doing the modification is doing it for "their own use", which is clearly *not* the case in the case of CleanFlix, CleanFlix clearly has a commercial interest of their own.
This brings me to another point. Let me put together another hypothetical. I create a new movie called "Hot Beer Dudes on the Run" or some such, and sell it. CleanFlix gets people to pay them for my version instead of theirs, without my permission. The idea that "it doesn't matter because CleanFlix bought a copy for each copy they sold" mitigates the possiblity that a cleaned up version of HBDR would actually be worth more than the original copy. Now, I will note that CleanFlix is in the business of making money. So, I will posit that they either make, or intend to make a profit. This means that the market value of the cleaned-up movies is in some circumstances greater than the value of the originals. CleanFlix these modified versions of the movies cuts into my right as the "fine art auteur" of HBDR to pimp my own cleaned-up modified versions of the movies.
Now, you might ask, why didn't I release a cleaned-up version of HBDR? Well, maybe I did. It's done all the time, television networks run the right to make cut versions of movies within some combination of economic return to the copyright holder and potentially some acceptance of the cuts by copyright holder. But if I never did, maybe it's because I've decided that it's in my long-term economic interest to never do that, that the damage that such a warm, wholesome cleaned-up version should not sully my pr0nalicious rep. Either way, I've got an interest in HBDR not coming in and cutting into my short-term or long-term economic interests, either way, CleanFlix takes my work and uses it in part to further their interests while decreasing mine.
I betcha a buck CleanFlix signs deals, just like the TV networks already do, to produce cleaned-up versions of flicks. The world will be kept safe from undedited versions of HBDR, but CleanFlix won't do it to their profit, at the expense of the copyright holder.
I'm a nature photographer.
Fast forwarding through scenes is a good thing. It is in your hands to decide when and if you want to skip parts. In your hands alone. You can decide that today you want to skip, tomorrow you don't. You can watch the movie in whole once to make a qualified decision that you do not want to see certain parts again, or that you do not want your kids to see certain parts at all.
YOU decide.
If you buy an "edited" version, you hand that responsibility over to someone else. You cannot decide. Someone already made that decision for you. You cannot decide that you want to see what is skipped and why. Sure, you could get both versions ("edited" and full), and compare them, but who'll do that?
The danger I see in edited versions is that some authority will impose its views on what is "acceptable" and what is not on you. There are people who will trust this authority to make a "good" decision for them, and for some this will even work. But you, and only you, should be the one to decide what you want to see and what you do not want to see. For yourself.
I'm all for your ability to choose the scenes you want to see, and against having someone else make that decision. Don't let someone else do that decision for you.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
In that I meant I had never seen a direct commercial for any other religion on television. As someone else posted, Scientology does run commercials for Dianetics. However that doesn't make it a common practice, as I think you would agree Scientology is also exceptionally aggressive in its sales practices - er, evangelistic attitudes.
I found this highly amusing. (Or in cruder terms, "LOL")
The world can be wrong today for once.