It seems like Hollywood has finally won an extended battle with companies such as CleanFlix and Family Flix that "sanitize" DVDs, editing for sexual and/or violent content and language. These "clean" DVDs would then be sold or rented to consumers. Last year a similar suit brought by 8 major motion picture companies in conjunction with a number of high profile directors was dismissed by judges, but the issue resurfaced and copyright holders have finally found justice.
|  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.
"Whether
these films should be edited in a manner that would make them acceptable
to more of the public playing on a DVD in a home environment is more than
merely a matter of marketing; it is a question of what audience the
copyright owner wants to reach," Matsch wrote. "This court is not free to
determine the social value of copyrighted works. What is protected are the
creator's rights to protect its creation in the form in which it was
created." |
The article goes on to explain that services like ClearPlay's on-the-fly editing software that can censor nudity or bleep profanity are legal because they don't produce an unauthorized copy of a protected work. The full article can be found here.
Source: http://today.reuters.com
