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Selling Alterable Versions of Star Wars Is Still Infringement, Says Court (arstechnica.com)
A federal court ruled that video-on-demand streaming service, VidAngel, which enables the filtering of objectionable content to make it family friendly, is breaking U.S. copyright law. Ars Technica reports: VidAngel buys movie discs and decrypts and rips them. It then streams versions that allow customers to filter out nudity, profanity, and violence. In doing so, it breached the performance rights of Disney, Lucasfilm, 20th Century Fox, and Warner Brothers, the court ruled. VidAngel purchased a disc for every stream it sold, some 2,500 titles in all. "Star Wars is still Star Wars, even without Princess Leia's bikini scene," the opinion said. Just because objectionable content is removed, that doesn't necessarily transform the content enough to allow this type of behavior under a fair use analysis, the court wrote Thursday. VidAngel also unsuccessfully argued that it was protected under the Family Movie Act (FMA) of 2005. That legislation allows the cracking of encryption to remove objectionable content so long as no fixed copy of the altered version is created. The court didn't agree, however, because VidAngel didn't have the permission in the first place to stream the content.
The court didn't agree, however, because VidAngel didn't have the permission in the first place to stream the content.
Which basically means that's what the court ruled on, and videos being altered in this fashion before stream never even came up.
Nothing to see here. No precedent was set regarding the actual act of alterations.
Expires 2 years after publishing.
Come on, they are no friends of Trump or GOP. Just fuck them over.
1) Remove all scenes of Jar Jar from Episode 1-3
2) Sell new de-Jarred version
3) Profit!!!
Wrong. The court only ruled that the plaintiffs were likely to prevail, and that the defendant's motion to terminate the preliminary injunction was denied. No precedent here.
I also have to say that I agree. Purchasing a DVD doesn't entitle you to stream the entire video to others, in any form. If you want a "clean" version of a movie, you can (1) sell a player that skips the objectionable parts or (2) make a video yourself. The copyright holder gets to control the distribution and modification of its work.
VidAngel sounds like a great service for Trump supporters. Fake Movies!!!!
Use vidangel like tech to turn all of their properties into family friendly films. Or they could try buying vidangel to save in some of the infrastructure costs... ,':~)
just sayin
Damn those activist judges!
What's next, are they going to try to teach evolution in schools?
"Star Wars is still Star Wars, even without Princess Leia's bikini scene..."
Uh, if you filter out all nudity, profanity, and violence from Star Wars, you're cutting out a hell of a lot more than a "nude" bikini scene, especially with Jar Jar Binks being a violent attack on the senses.
I'm not exactly sure what the hell is the point with this kind of filtering. The average Fast and Furious movie would be filtered into 5 minutes of The Rock standing there flexing his eyebrows.
Censorship is an organization in authority saying: "You can't watch this part of the movie." VidAngel was giving people the choice of how they wanted to watch the movie. VERY DIFFERENT from censorship.
This is the ultimate slippery slope. To allow this would also permit cutting out all the gratuitous story lines in movies, leaving just the sex and violence. The public would be allowed to see all the good stuff without having to suffer through all the boring pap. It would be like being able to buy Playboy without all the pointless articles. Think of the impact on the economy!
There are two things that are getting muddled here. First you don't have the right to stream something to another party just because you bought the physical media. Second, and this one is more interesting, is there is no equivalent to performing rights for movies. I suppose you could buy rights to do a remake, but it's a more complicated arrangement between movie studios rather than putting on a play or performing a cover of a song.
You are Fur Q and I claim my £5.
You are incorrect. To understand this better one needs to actually have read the Family Viewing Act. It contains some rather surprising, and refreshing, exceptions to copyright laws and content delivery restrictions. What Vid Angel and others are doing seems to be highly protected under this law.
The strategy the content companies have taken is the "bring me a rock" strategy where every company before and after vid angel that tries to sell bowlderized films, the company says yes that's all legal if you do it correctly but you are doing it wrong. They then fail to spell out what to them would be doing it right. Just everybody is doing it wrong.
I really enjoyed vid angel's original model because it made is affordable to strip out content of films that I was uncomfortable showing kids in the house (not just my kids). Their later model was much less convenient so I didn't use it.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Curious people can look up the now defunct company CleanFlicks which in the previous decade tried a different variation of this approach. They bought movies and edited them themselves to remove objectionable content (as they and their customers defined it) and sold those edited DVDs and VHS tapes. They lost in court and went out of business. I get that VidAngel isn't actually selling physical copies, which is their way to try to sneak around the CleanFlicks ruling, but a Fair Use argument was almost never going to fly. If you use, for example, 10 seconds of a movie, you can probably get away with Fair Use. If you use almost the entire movie, no, you can't get away with Fair Use. Fair Use has never been legally defied as to exactly what it is and isn't, but previous cases suggested that this argument was going to fail here.
Do the media HAVE a transfer of copyright to do that?
And pixelating out things is also a derivation. Do they have the copy rights to digitally modify someone else's advertisement boards or trade mark images?
I've always wondered why objectionable is usually bikinis, nudity, or sex, but not violence. It is okay to watch people get hurt or killed, but not having fun. I find that weird.
Any time when your service:
1) displays content on some screens (of your customers)
2) moves bits around (from device to another)
3) it's a performance
these activities gets put to 3 possible categories:
a) either you created the content yourself
b) or you licensed content that someone else created
c) or you're doing copyright infringement
No amount of fuzzy explanations will help if (1), (2) or (3) happens... This VidAngel's case is very clear - their customers are displaying the movies and movement of bits is happening, so they need to choose either (a), (b), or (c), and in this case they could only choose (c), which is kinda bad position for vidangel.
Any responsible business leader would record a Sale as a Sale, more reveunues and more porfits are the Real Bottom line.
As long as VidAngel pays full wholesale price for movies & streaming agreements, I don't care if they only show 35 minutes of a two hour film.
Their customers Want filtered product.
We want to sell more product.
VidAngel expands sales to the Gee Rated market space.
Sales and profits we wouldn't normally get.
So as long as Viewers are paying us full price, I really don't care if they watch all of it or none of it.
If you buy the happy meal, I wont force you to eat all your french fries.
The paying customer isn't always right, but I don't care, as long as I get the money.
First, 'intellectual property' doesn't exist.
Second, using 'intellectual' in the same sentence as 'star wars' is a bit of a stretch, it's entertainment for stupid kids.
Well, Monty Python objected when CBS removed the naughty bits. http://mentalfloss.com/article/501461/when-monty-python-took-american-television-court They thought it misrepresented their work. The point of that suit is that copyright does not protect artistic or reputational rights in the work apart from the permission to copy or make derivative works. Trying to make money by showing viewers what they want has been a long struggle.
There shouldn't be a comma before "Vidangel" in "A federal court ruled that video-on-demand streaming service, VidAngel, which enables...:
Regarding post release censoring, it is far past time for a federal law to amend copyright to allow this to be done by any service as long as they offer both an un-altered version as well as the altered version, both clearly described as such (but the original can be locked behind a parental password). Hell, broadcast TV has been doing this exact same thing for what 50 years now...
When will the idiots in Hollywood realize that the old adage "The customer is always right" exists to enhance business. The customer didn't like commercials, didn't like being a slave to TV schedules, didn't like crowded, noisy movie theaters, and now streaming services are killing off the old models because it is what the customer wants.
In the same way, if I want to watch an obscenity censored version of Terminator (or whatever) because I don't want the kids walking in Arnold's dick flopping around, I as the paying customer should have that option. Maybe Hollywood can collect some statistics and realize that a movie doesn't need T&A, exploding heads and obscenities every 5th word to be a good story or a commercial success, even with the majority of adults. Hollywood's "artistic integrity" ends at my front door. They wonder why their profits are down when 60% of the country refuse to buy 90% of the movies they make because of the extraneous filth they shovel in.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
Here's another stupid case of not allowing a third party to do what is legal if done by oneself.
Copyright really needs an agent clause. A timeshifting/commercial removing service should be a totally legit thing.
...
Title II: Exemption from Infringement for Skipping Audio and Video Content In Motion Pictures - Family Movie Act of 2005 - (Sec. 202) Creates an exemption from copyright infringement for: (1) the making imperceptible, by or at the direction of a private household, of limited portions of audio or video content of a motion picture during a performance in or transmitted to that household for private home viewing from an authorized copy of the motion picture; or (2) the creation or provision of technology that enables such editing, is designed and marketed for such use, creates no fixed copy of the altered version, and makes no changes, deletions or additions to commercial advertisements or promotional announcements that would otherwise be performed or displayed.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/...
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The TV edit of "Scanners".
Many movies could be improved with some judicious editing.
It is a fantastic idea that movies can be censored in various ways by those who watch them. this should be mandatorily available I think
I realize this may be apples and oranges, but how does this work for TV? There's all sorts of cleaning up and editing that goes into movies that show up on TV.
Nearly everything coming out of Hollywood is leftist propaganda now, of course they won't let anyone modify it. Wake up.
Um, yeah. ClearPlay has been doing that, SINCE 1999 ALREADY. (well, in '99 the DVD player couldn't really connect to the Internet, it either downloaded filters via a Modem, or customers downloaded them to a USB flash drive and put that into the player to load them, but their current Blu-Ray players have WiFi). ClearPlay more recently started streaming with filters in partnership with Google Play, and even more recently with Amazon, etc, but they still sell the physical players, though they are almost always sold out.
The Family Movie Act of 2005 _explicitly allows_ this type of filtering. What it does NOT allow is a company randomly deciding to buy and rip DVD and Blu-Rays to their servers, edit them, and run an unlicensed, unauthorized streaming service for a profit, which is what VidAngel was (stupidly) doing. There is at least one competitor (clearplay) that has been doing this for years, without breaking the law, both for physical disks (using a special player) and for streaming (in partnership with Amazon video, etc).
Unfortunately Clearplay's marketing has pretty consistently sucked, as has their supply chain, etc, so not a lot of people have even heard of them. VidAngel gained popularity with brilliant marketing and impossibly cheap prices (that they were only able to achieve, because they didn't bother actually buying the rights to stream anything and instead invented a completely invalid "buy" and "sell back", but not really, and stream in between business model).
Kids grew up seeing adult sex for most of human existence. From adult animals out in nature to actual humans and they likely knew those humans, quite possibly their parents.
Humanity wasn't messed up until modern times somehow saved the children... actually, we treat and value children less in modern "civilized" times.
Not that improper exposure can't cause mental harm but improper exposure to a great many topics can damage a child. Such as killing animals in the wrong way/setting... or not being exposed to it.... Me, I would go vegan if I had to prepare and collect all the animal products I consume... Now if I was forced over the initial dislike of the process I'd adapt and be fine with it, but since I never will have to do it... Being sheltered from sex completely makes it seem unnatural and promotes the number of possible negative interpretations; lacking a "this is not a big deal" context that a routine natural exposure provides.
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