Companies attempting to profit from their unironic acceptance of the "jive" subtitles from Airplane will have to stick to the Veggie Tales series from now on:
A federal judge in Colorado has handed the entertainment industry a big win in its protracted legal battle against a handful of small companies that offer sanitized versions of theatrical releases on DVD.
The case encompasses two of Hollywood's biggest headaches these days: the culture wars and the disruptive influence of digital technologies.
Senior U.S. District Court Judge Richard Matsch came down squarely on the side of the Directors Guild of America and the major studios in his ruling that the companies must immediately cease all production, sale and rentals of edited videos. The summary judgment issued Thursday requires the companies -- Utah-based CleanFlicks, CleanFilms and Play It Clean Video, Arizona-based Family Flix USA and the separate entity CleanFlicks of Colorado -- to turn over all existing copies of their edited movies to lawyers for the studios for destruction within five days of the ruling.
Utah's CleanFlicks, which describes itself as the largest distributor of edited movies, through online sales and rentals and sales to video stores in Utah, Arizona and other states in the region, said it would continue its fight against the guild and the studios. CleanFlicks and the others make copies of official DVD releases and then edit them for sex, nudity, violence and profanity.
One wonders if any changes were made to the CleanFlicks version of The Passion of the Christ.
You don't get it both ways, guys: if the movies presented as are aren't to your liking, make your own. You don't get to alter a director's work without his approval. I realize our "human laws" don't hold up against the teachings of Jesus (or Joseph Smith, whoever), so maybe you ask him to pay your legal fees.
CleanFlicks and the others maintained their edited DVDs were legal under fair use guidelines that allow for the use of copyrighted material in criticism, news reporting, parody and other circumstances. The slogan on the CleanFlicks Web site is "It's About Choice." An online listing for Family Flix's offerings on the Web site of the Mormon-based Meridian magazine noted that the content snipped out of its edited videos included all references to "homosexuality, perversion and co-habitation."
Interesting where these people put their priorities when it comes to "choice."
And everybody knows homosexuals are often the only watchable part of most Hollywood releases. A Rupert Everett-less My Best Friend's Wedding would have roughly as many laughs as The Deer Hunter.
Joel Schumacher's Batman movies must've been a bitch to edit.
The mainstreaming of sophisticated digital editing technologies has fueled the cottage industry of movie sanitizers. CleanFlicks and others purchase an official DVD copy of a film on DVD for each edited version of the title they produce through the use of editing systems and software. The official release disc is included alongside the edited copy in every sale or rental transaction conducted. As such, the companies argued that they had the right on First Amendment and fair use grounds to offer consumers the alternative of an edited version for private viewing, so long as they maintained that "one-to-one" ratio to ensure that copyright holders got their due from the transactions. Matsch disagreed.
"Their business is illegitimate," the judge wrote in his 16-page ruling. "The right to control the content of the copyrighted work ... is the essence of the law of copyright."
Let's be honest; these same directors routinely sell the rights to their movies to TV networks for prime time airing. But at the same time, they retain a say in what kind of content cuts are made. CleanFlicks and their ilk didn't just edit out profanity and nudity, but also anything ideologically opposed to their pig ignorant worldview.
Obviously, not everyone agrees with my sage analysis...
Early on, the legal sparring involved Salt Lake City-based ClearPlay, which offers video filtering software that allows for home viewing of cleaned-up versions of Hollywood titles.
ClearPlay offers software programs developed for specific titles that users can run on their computer or ClearPlay's proprietary DVD player along with an official copy of the DVD. With this technology, a nude shot of an actor can be altered to show a silhouette, or profanity can be bleeped out. Because ClearPlay's technology does not involve making an altered DVD copy, it has been shielded from the copyright infringement claims. The debate over movie content filtering activities made its way into Congress, which passed the 2005 Family Movie Act that protects ClearPlay and other software-based filtering companies. Matsch noted that Congress at that time had the opportunity to also carve out legal protections for CleanFlicks and its ilk, but chose not to.
[...]
Matsch's opinion could wind up eliminating most of ClearPlay's competition, but company CEO Bill Aho still criticized Matsch's reasoning."While it may be good for ClearPlay Inc., it's bad for parents," Aho said. "Moms and dads need all the help they can get to protect their kids, and these companies were providing a valuable service."
Please don't presume to speak for me, Bill. I make damn sure the most adult thing She Who Shall Not Be Named sees on TV is Buddy Guy on Jack's Big Music Show. We save Deadwood - in all its cocksucking glory - for when she's safely in bed.
A lot of movies really suck. It seems like these filters may be the way to fix that; you could start out by just reversing the polarity on the CleanFlicks filter so it added more homosexuality and cohabitation, but also I'm sure there's a market there if they would branch out into filters that make me care about the characters, improve the acting, etc.
Or if they could just translate the whole movie into jive, that would be cool too - and there's an open-source program that does that already, they just need to hook it up.
Come on, Pete. An adorable toddler who talks like Mr. Wu would be a hit at parties.
I agree with the decision, although I do hate the state of modern copyright law; I hope that selling machines that allow parents to be self-editors would at least remain in tact. Because that 12-minute child-safe version of Bad Lieutenant is essential viewing.