Cutting out the Naughty Bits Ruled Illegal 1329
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.'''
Awesome (Score:4, Interesting)
Ok.. businesses are one thing, what about parents? (Score:5, Interesting)
in which I support the prudes... (Score:2, Interesting)
Selling damaged books illegal now? (Score:3, Interesting)
Something tells me the MPAA has an ideal court case for extending their powers, here. I mean, 99% of the population would glance at this case and declare: "Cutting the naughty bits out of movies is bad!" or "Hur hur hur, take dat you stupid rednecks!"
C'mon, State Your Real Goals (Score:3, Interesting)
And from the DGA President:
These are supposed to show the reason behind the decision. Following the logic of the first, censorship of any sort of art would be copyright infringement. The second quote isn't even relevant. The company clearly states that the DVDs are edited; that's the whole point of someone trading an unedited one for their version!
If the company is doing something else that's infringing, I could understand the suit, but that's not what the suers are talking about.
Interesting Hypocrisy (Score:2, Interesting)
GrpA
Re:Selling damaged books illegal now? (Score:3, Interesting)
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:But where do they put them? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Where's the harm? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
New allies for copyright reform! (Score:3, Interesting)
Not ClearPlay (Score:3, Interesting)
I seem to recall the
Speaking as an artist... (Score:2, Interesting)
Believe it or not, every detail of every scene in the movie is very intentional. If someone were to delete anything, espically an entire scene, that could destroy the entire central image I was going for.
For this reason, I support the decision.
That said, I'm not a huge fan of "naughty bits" myself, particularly in front of children. As an artist, however, I would rather the parents say "we're not going to watch this movie" and not buy it than for them to re-edit it themselves.
Removal of a whole song on a CD is different... i would view that as "we're not going to listen to this song", rather than "We're going to change this persons art."
Re:An Alternative (Score:1, Interesting)
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.
Where have you been the past eight years? This practice was outlawed in 1998 with unanimous support in both houses of congress. To put any feature into a DVD player, you have to have written permission from the DVD Copy Control Association [wikipedia.org] which is controled by the major movie studios.
Re:An Alternative (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, I believe that all DVD players can do this, as this feature was built right into the DVD spec (and as the spec was being developed/marketed, there was a general belief that this feature would become commonplace.)
The problem is not the players, its the content makers who decline to take advantage of it.
does this mean they'll broadcast the naugty bits? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is about content control, not censorship (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Awesome (Score:3, Interesting)
Big Brother? Well it is funny that every situation they try to come up with that lets them get around having a big brother dictate what we can see, gets shot in the head. It apears that having a big brother watching everyone is the only solution they have left beside caving in on thier values. I'm not sure they are willing to do that. They tend to believe just as strong as those who want the smut on the streets. I guess all we can really do is hope no one make a in soviet russia, bigbrother is your sister joke.
Re:Cleanflix, not Walmart (Score:3, Interesting)
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Selling damaged books illegal now? (Score:3, Interesting)
Big difference.
Re:Cleanflix, not Walmart (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:not a black and white case (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Don't get your hopes up (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A little clarification (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Cleanflix, not Walmart (Score:2, Interesting)
> (reproduction) indicates something seriously wrong with an individual.
Strange...I always thought being able to do that was well, kind of, what made humans...not animals?
I mean, I have a strong biological urge to chase away or kill every male and attempt to inseminate every female of my species that I meet.
As a man of God, do you really want to be suggesting that I shouldn't at least attempt to act in a manner contrary to those fairly biological urges of mine?
I wonder what my wife would think of that? If I had one. Which of course, I don't, this being Slashdot and all.
Re:Cleanflix, not Walmart (Score:1, Interesting)
I'll attempt to answer, arguing from a Christian Liberterian viewpoint...
If I want to buy alcohol on Sunday, how does that affect you?
It doesn't, so shopping hours & alcohol should be unregulated.
There's absolutely no reason all stores shouldn't be open on Sunday. In fact, it quite pisses me off that we pretend to have separation of church and state (church being any religion, not necessarily Christian ones). Open Sunday, please! It will make my shopping easier as Saturday is my day of rest.
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.
Much like to original poster, it actually doesn't affect me in any way. Given that marriage is a societal institution, gay marriage should clearly be legalized. If the government can decide who can and cannot get married, without looking into suitability, does it really matter if these people are gender opposite or not? I'll go you one further, I fully endorse legalized polygamy, polyany, and group marriages. If the state is involved, it really does not matter.
Not to me, marriage is between myself, my wife, and G-D. That being the case, if your religion allows for gay marriage, then good luck. And, from a strictly Jewish Legal perspective, the penalty for homosexual acts and desecrating the sabbath is the same. Given that we don't exactly stone conservative or religious jews, there's really no need to pretend that we should with homosexuals either. Live and let live. On the other hand, please don't require my religion to accept your marriage, and to be consistent, please don't recognize mine either.
When we got married, we opted to not get a civial marriage certificate, given that we see absolutely zero value in it. And thankfully, we live in Canada, where after a year of marriage that decision will literally have no affect on our lives. The only difference was that we wrote our wills earlier on in our marriage than necessary, to ensure continuity of assets.
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.
Again, it doesn't. The Tzitz Eliezer (foremost authority on Jewish Law and Medical Ethics) allows for abortions, provided they're done within the first 40 days of a pregnancy. That doesn't mean that they can't be done afterwards, just that they must be done for a reason. His logic being that a small clump of cells that is not even reasonably self sustaining, does not constitute life. Please note, I'm not trying to start a debate!, I'm really just providing the information, do with it what you will.
If I want to have sex before marriage, how does that affect you?
Provided you're doing it in
Re:Premortal sex? (Score:1, Interesting)
Which one is the woman and which one is the man?
In Soviet Russia, Property Owns You! (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Cleanflix, not Walmart (Score:2, Interesting)
Now, my problem with this crap is when privately-owned-yet-public-facilities like Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, and apparently Wal-mart (I don't buy movies from Wal-mart; full screen can kiss my ass) start removing my ability to choose. It is one thing for Blockbuster not to carry "unrated" versions (one of the reasons I stopped going to Blockbuster to begin with) - but to carry the SANITIZED flicks (well-marked or not) instead of the actual versions (or carrying both with more copies of the sanitized version than the other) is just plain wrong to me.
Is it their right to do so? I suppose so. Then again, if you want to get technical, it's Lucas' right to alter every edition of Star Wars and never let the originals out, right?
I like to akin this to celebrity-ism. When you become a famous celebrity or well-known to the public, you lose some of your rights. As a public figure, you can be lampooned, ridiculed, and in many cases those looking to expose you for profit are protected. When you become a celebrity, you lose some of your rights - and every single one of them know this going in.
When you become Wal-mart, Lucas, or Blockbuster - you should also lose some of your rights because you have that much influence on the public. If and when a company controls 40%+ of sales in a town, they have an obligation to serve the public trust. Before you say "censorship serves the public trust", I want to point out that no one came and surveyed me to ask me if I wanted sanitized CDs in my local Wal-mart before they built it. No one polled me and said "would carrying unrated movies cause you problems?" Censorship is almost ALWAYS catering to the needs of the FEW, not the needs of the MANY as I feel they should do. Look at the FCC as a prime example.
Of course, Wal-mart WAS willing to call me at 8pm at night and ask me to come support the building of a new store in my community. I told them there were enough Wal-marts per capita in this town, and they could go and fornicate themselves
It isn't Wal-mart's job to protect the people and perform real-time censorship. It should be up to the people to take care of themselves and their children.
Re:Ok.. businesses are one thing, what about paren (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A little clarification (Score:1, Interesting)
Example: I friend of mine bought Dirty Work at walmart. Once we started watching it he quickly realized that something was up. First, there were no curse words. Second, many entire scenes were removed. There was no special marking or code on any of the DVDs packaging. I hadn't seen the movie yet, so I was begining to think this movie blowed goats. What's worse, when he tried to return the movie to walmart, explaining that they had clearly misrepresented the product in question, the employees and manager spoke and looked at him like a meth addicted pervert trying return a three foot black dildo. They tried to claim that if the DVD was in fact censored, then it would have been clearly labeled on the packaging. Upon examing the package, even the manager couldn't find any label of special code (he brought all of the original wrapping back tot the store). Their final excuse was something along the lines of Walmart being a 'family' store that doesn't sell such dirty content.
And that is why I don't bother to shop at walmart anymore unless (rarely this happens) I absolutely must have something between the hours of 12 and 5 in the morning. At this point I don't really care if they change their policy; I don't trust them.
Unrelated but funny: One time at a walmart when I asked an employees where the raisins were, they replied "What are raisins?"
"You know, grapes that have been dried in the sun," I said. Employee still returning quizzical look. What bunch of stupid fascist fundamentalists.
Depends on where you're tried (Score:3, Interesting)
From reading the material on derivative works, it looks like the Ninth Circuit would consider adding stickers to an existing photograph to be an inappropriate creation of a derivative work, whereas the Seventh Circuit might decide the exact opposite.
If limited to splicing of purchased VHS tapes, the two courts might each decide the case differently, making even VHS splicing a murky legal choice, at best.
I would really like to see the full text of the Judge's ruling in this case, as that is the only way to know on what grounds he made the decision. From the little bit we get from the article, he seems more likely to mimic the Ninth Circuit ruling.
protection - but of what? (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, well, it's beyond me how a typical (already selfcensored) hollywoodfilm like Titanic (with PG-rating 13, I believe) would involve 'harming' children. I mean, what: it's a love story. If there is any nudity between people that love eachother shown, how is this exactly 'harmful'? And how exactly are children protected from the very 'nasty place that can be the world' by it? To give an analogy: if you protect someone from diseases by making him stay in a completely microbe-free clean-room his whole childhood, will he be better served by it when he walks into the real world, then if he happend to have encountered a bunch of microbes and built resistance to it?
But anyway, we've been over this, and indeed: it remains a subjective matter, and out of principle I regard the right to watch something you own the way you want it as being higher then almost any other consideration. However, *I* feel the integrity of the vision of the creator of the movie/book/etc. is worth something to...clearly other people have a different idea.
"I don't see it as a "show this or show nothing" choice - not in my own home."
Neither do I (it's a false dichotomy, there). I only say, it has importance that the vision is shown as it was meant to too and IF the kids are really too immature to handle the moderate nudity shown in films as Titanic (say, 6 years in your vision perhaps(?)), then they are to immature to comprehend the film at all. I would simply say: I'll let them watch it when they are a bit older. That way, they do get to see the film (contrary to what you claim), AND the integrity of the film is kept intact. You basically say: the integrity of the film isn't worth waiting a few years before showing it to my kids.
I do not agree, neither do the movie-directors, it would seem. You do have a choice, mind you, but it doesn't have to involve altering the vision they created with their film. Now, no-one can actually forbid viewing it like you want, neither should the law get involved in the viewing process (though, to some degree it does already), but it doesn't change the fact one takes a decision to alter their vision because one is purportedly to 'offensed' by parts of the film, but yet too impatient to wait untill ones' kids are old enough to see the film like it is supposed to be seen. I refute the notion that it's better to show a false impression of something, then wait until one can see it like it really was made.
At least one has to acknowledge it is THAT choice one makes.
But further debate about the viewing process is rather mute, as I said. Something entirely different, which I really focused on in my posts, is the fact that other companies DO NOT have the right to alter a movie itself, and then sell it under the name of the author. If I write a book, I can't decide how and if you want to read it, but I sure as hell can prohibit anyone from altering my book without my authorisation, and selling it as if it was mine. This is, because it isn't *my* story anymore, and thus it shouldn't carry my name. (And obviously, selling it under another name would be plagiatism).
For other examples and analogies, see my other posts.
you know...... (Score:1, Interesting)
Wally World has the business to back these demands up too.
No, this judgement is in relation to these back water companies run by Bush loving nut jobs. These companies make illegal copies of movies, and EDIT the nasty bits out of the copies. Then, they ask their customers to send them a retail version of the disk and a bit of cash for the service, in exchange for this edited version. See, the interesting thing here is that if you or I did the same thing under the guise of ANYTHING but religious beliefs.....we would be in jail already for traficing bootleg materials.
God Bless America.