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.'''

Comments

Awesome

[BlueCup]

I didn't think there was any way that this would work out, but it did. I remember the first time I bought a cd from wal-mart, only to return it later because it was missing a couple of tracks.

Ok.. businesses are one thing, what about parents?

[BalanceOfJudgement]

What I'm interested to know is how this affects parents who use their DVR's to achieve the same purpose to sanitize movies for their children. Hollywood has expressed anger over THAT practice, too, which seems to me wholly unfair.

Re:Selling damaged books illegal now?

[Rayonic]

Not quite. You own the physical book. You can do what you want with it... including tearing out pages, burning it, or blacking out all instances of the word "the" if you choose. 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.

Except that the copying of content to a new disc isn't what this ruling is about. That part is legal. It's the editing of the content that was deemed illegal. The Director's Guild would have you believe that the "artist" has an intrinsic right to see that his work is only displayed in approved forms. Such a right does not exist in law. (Not in the United States, anyway.)

The only potentially illegal thing these companies could have done is misrepresented their edited versions as the original versions. There are quotes in the article that insinuate that, but I highly doubt the edited discs weren't clearly labeled.

Re:Where's the harm?

[FractalZone]

I think I can see where the harm is. Think of Ayn Rand's novels, The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged. If those were edited for content by many of today's far-Left nitwits, they would not convey the same message. The problem is that they would (presumably) be sold as the same novels written by the same author, something I am sure she would disapprove of if she were still alive today.

A little editing can be a very dangerous thing. How hard would it be to edit a few sections out of Michael Moore's "Roger & Me" to make the unionized workers in Flint look like stupid, incompetent crybabies? That film is a wonderful piece of propaganda that would be horribly distorted if it was edited in a malicious manner.

Almost any non-trivial creative work contains/conveys some sort of message(s) that can easily be lost or damaged by clever (or simply bad) editing. I know I do not want a lot of things I write edited down and posted out of context as being written by me, even though that does happen all too often to people a lot more famous than I will ever be.

This is about content control, not censorship

[TheFlyingGoat]

I understand where the movie companies are coming from in terms of copyright... they don't want people taking a DVD, adding additional clips/features/menus/etc, and selling that for a profit. Then again, I don't really understand why they have an issue with that. They're getting just as much money from each DVD sale, so it's not like they're losing any business. In fact, they're probably gaining business from those people who wouldn't normally buy a certain movie due to violent/sexual/etc content, but will if they get an edited version of the movie.

As for the directors and producers that claim their artistic vision was impeded upon, they sure don't have an issue with those movies being modified in the exact same way for broadcast on network tv. All they care about is the large amount of money the networks give them.

So, what this really comes down to is the movie studios wanting complete control over their works, which I'm surprised to see much of the Slashdot crowd backing up. Seems it's better to hate "the red states" than to hate the MPAA.

Now that that those are taken care of, where do Microsoft, the Kansas Board of Education, America, Republicans, sports, and current music stars fit in? ;)

Re:Cleanflix, not Walmart

[spencer1]

I agree with what you stated about gay marriage, etc. My religion believes that in the premortal existence, two separate plans were presented. Satan's plan, which God did not choose, was to coerce people to be righteous so that everyone could receive exaltation. Jesus's plan was that people should be free to choose: there must be opposition in all things. Some people definitely go too far into pushing their beliefs on others; in my opinion this is following Satan's plan and it is unfortunate that most people of my faith act this way and are not more tolerant.

However, the line must be drawn somewhere. Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins, and many believe that abortion is included in this.

Re:A little clarification

[pockyninja]

People tend to get *very* irate if they do not think they should be carded for something. And silly as it sounds, having someone screaming at you after you've been dealing with customers for 8 hours really can affect a decision to card someone. In addition, fewer people try to illegally purchase alcohol and ammunition than movies or games. Think about it: it's illegal to buy beer if you're under 21, but it's only illegal to sell restricted movies to minors. See the difference?

Re:not a black and white case

[SnowZero]

One of the "clean movie" companies does exactly this (forgot the name, saw it on a news story of DVD editing). They sell special web-connected DVD players that download edit lists for the movies. Though more expensive to set up, they feel they are more legally in the clear. I think this model is actually quite nice, as you could tag each missing part, and then set up a menu for what things are ok to show (language, nudity, violence, etc) as checklists or even allowable levels. That would give the consumer complete control.

Personally I like to watch un-edited movies, but I defend the rights of others to watch whatever edit they want of something they bought. "Bounty" does not tell me what I am allowed and not allowed to do with their paper towels, magazines do not prevent me from skipping through stories, so why is a plastic disc treated differently?

Re:A little clarification

[rolfwind]

Have you ever been to Wal-mart?

I have been carded for buying 5 minute expoxy and other household cleaners because they (this Wal-mart) maintains that I have to be at least 18 to buy such stuff. Never mind that I can go to any supermarket here and buy the same items no problem without hassle because my state has no such laws on such items. It is Wal-mart themselves that are doing this on their own initiative.

If they didn't add even "one minute" to the transaction, they wouldn't do this, but they do anyhow. And they have been doing this for years.

Same thing with other items.

The thing Wal-mart is doing with music is censorship, plain and simple. Why not sell the explicit lyrics? Well, we have no problem establishing that they don't mind carding for frivolous items, my thinking is that they KNOW they can sell a few more CDs while keeping to their silly code. You can't change the nature of 5-minute expoxy or drain cleaner, these items are what they are, but if you can make a CD "kid friendly", in their view, why not do it.

I think it's a load of shit, but that may be just me.

In Soviet Russia, Property Owns You!

[spun]

No, no, no. You can't actually edit his post, just like Cleanfix can't edit the original. What Cleanfix can do is what you actually did. You provided an edited copy, that everyone can clearly see is not the original, without altering the original. Some people may prefer your version, but they will never be confused as to who wrote what.

It comes down to fair use. It saddens me that anyone would be such a prissy little prude as to want such a thing, but I support the rights of prissy little prudes to be prissy little prudes, just as I support the rights of other 'artists' to take a copy of the Bible and alter it by smearing it with shit. You buy it, you can do whatever the fuck you want with it.

I may be a socialist, but I'm no communist and I'd hope that in this country private property still means exactly that. In the end, this means commercial skipping is just as illegal.