Hollywood Wins Fight Against Sanitized DVDs
Reuters
LOS ANGELES (July 10) - 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.


David Schachter, attorney for CleanFlicks of Colorado, said Sunday that it was unclear whether any of the video-editing companies would seek an emergency hearing this week to request a stay of the injunction pending an appeal. He said such a move was unlikely for his client, which operates a retail store in Colorado Springs. It was unclear whether the store was still open Sunday.


Representatives for Family Flix could not be reached for comment during the weekend. A posting on the Web site http://www.clean-edited-movies.com reported that the Family Flix had decided to shut its doors after five years as a result of the litigation, though the date of the posting was unclear. The site quoted Family Flix founders Richard and Sandra Teraci as making plans to establish their own production company.


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."

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Funny this went on for five years or more. We've all seen the warnings at the start of films against unauthorized distribution for profit. Guess it takes a lot of trouble to enforce those laws.

I personally wouldn't care to watch an edited movie. I hate watching movies on network television for the same reason. Guess families don't want the corrupting influence of Hollywood in their kids' lives. But if you consider movies that corrupt, why not avoid them altogether?

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"The Gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to plague us." - King Lear

This makes me think of the case of Thomas Bowdler. He was an Englishmen credited with "The Family Shakespeare", the most popular Shakespeare edition of the early 1800's. It seems Bowdler took out "anything which could give just offense to the religious and virtuous mind" in the Shakespeare canon, which must have taken considerable trouble.

It introduced a new term into the language: Bowdlerised. You might guess what it means.

Anyway, it turns out the man only lent his name to the process. His sister is the one who edited The Family Shakespeare. A proper woman could not admit to being the editor, since that would imply she knew enough about sex and whatnot to catch the references.

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"The Gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to plague us." - King Lear

This reminds me a little bit of the controversy around colorizing movies a few years back. Citizen Kane was one of the movies that completely avoided the whole colorization nonsense because Orson Welles had the foresight to have it written into his contract that the movie couldn't be seen in any other forum besides what he had intended. That old rascal.

Yeah, sanitized movies suck, but what's really wild is that Wal-mart has enough pull to force CD companies to produced sanitized versions of albums just because they can drive so many sales. How long will it be before some brilliant VP at Wal-mart decides to force the movie companies to produce "cleaned-up" versions of movies exclusively for sale at Wal-mart? Especially now that this market has opened itself up like it has.

I was thinking about that recently on a stroll through Wal-Mart.

I knew about the sanitized albums, but then I noticed they carried Director's Cuts of many movies. I noticed movies that were criticized for their excesses, like The Devil's Rejects. And I thought to myself, "why doesn't Wal-Mart censor their movies, too?"

My guess is they would have, if this court case had gone the other direction. Maybe this ruling precludes such a turn of events.

Though I'm glad they haven't tried to censor movies, it strikes me as hypocritical that Wal-Mart to hold such a stance on music, but not movies. Guess it wouldn't be the first time Wal-Mart was accused of hypocrisy...

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"The Gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to plague us." - King Lear

I spend a great deal of money at Wal Mart, but I don't buy any CD's there because of this crap. (I should clarify that I don't buy my personal CDs there. The wife and kids still buy some of theirs at Wal Mart, but they don't listen to filth) I do buy a ton of movies there though, but if they start censoring them, there are plenty of other places I can buy them.

I will not buy anything that's been edited by an outside party. If the artist intended for the album to be filled with cursing, then that's what I want to hear.

And that's assuming that Wal-Mart will even sell the CD in the first place. There are a lot of albums that they simply won't carry for one reason or another. I remember back when they refused to carry one of Sheryl Crow's albums because she took a swipe at them in one of her songs for selling guns.

Movies, on the other hand, would be even worse. At least a song can just have the offending words beeped out or altered. In a movie, cutting out scenes can alter the pace and meaning of the film, and could leave an audience confused as to what the hell is going on.
And replacing the curse words with cleaner words often results in the film just being silly. Lethal Weapon is a movie which springs to mind. Seeing it on television was pretty funny. All these tough guys saying things like "We bury the funsters" (replacing "We bury the fuc*ers").

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