Cutting out the Naughty Bits Ruled Illegal

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.'''

Ok.. businesses are one thing, what about parents?

[BalanceOfJudgement (962905)]

What I'm interested to know is how this affects parents who use their DVR's to achieve the same purpose to sanitize movies for their children. Hollywood has expressed anger over THAT practice, too, which seems to me wholly unfair.

Re:Ok.. businesses are one thing, what about paren

[jonnythan (79727)]

Parents don't use DVR's to produce commercially sold edited copies of content published by another party.

Re:Ok.. businesses are one thing, what about paren

[dimfeld (247690)]

I think the difference there is that you're not distributing your edited copy to the public.

Re:Selling damaged books illegal now?

[nacturation (646836)]

From what I understand from this ruling, it would be illegal for me to buy a book, tear out every other page, and sell it to someone else. That's a pretty close analogy, seeing as both my actions and Cleanflicks' third-party video cutting are not authorized by the copyright holder.

Not quite. You own the physical book. You can do what you want with it... including tearing out pages, burning it, or blacking out all instances of the word "the" if you choose. What you can't do is type the contents of the book into a word processor, remove certain sections of it, reprint the modified book, and then sell that bound inside the original cover. That's the difference.
 

Re:Selling damaged books illegal now?

[Dausha (546002)]

"What you can't do is type the contents of the book into a word processor, remove certain sections of it, reprint the modified book, and then sell that bound inside the original cover. That's the difference."

This is not a comparative description. For each copy of the movie these companies sell, they buy one from Hollywood. Thus, if they sell 1984 copies of Gladiator with the naughty bits omitted, then they buy 1984 copies from the movie production company first. Thus, it can be said they are only reselling the copy of the book that they themselves purchased and from which they ripped out naughty pages.

The only difference between my doing this and them doing this is that they are conducting the same business on a larger scale.

What is more important to Hollywood is what our society deems appropriate. If these companies become more popular, then it could be argued in court that this success means the naughty parts of these movies violate public decency and can therefore face government stricture. These standards have eroded over my lifetime, but it need not be so.

But where do they put them?

[zCyl (14362)]

This reminds me of the classic question of what happens to all the donut holes...

Re:But where do they put them?

[nacturation (646836)]

I'm going to start a company which sells DVDs containing *only* the naughty bits from movies... it'll be called Holy Donut Entertainment. I mean, sometimes you just don't have the time to fast forward through the boring bits, right?
 

Shouldn't be an issue

[Frogbert (589961)]

Nothing disgusts me more then watching or reading something I know has been censored. People should be free to consume whatever media they want to, as long as it isn't hurting anybody no one should have the right to tell me what I can and can't see. Furthermore if I created a work of art I would find it supremely offensive to have some clensing squad go over it and take out the stuff that might offend people, chances are if it offends someone it was put there for that reason. This is with the possible exception of old works that have become offensive, but in that case they should be left as they are and taken in the context that they were created.

Re:Shouldn't be an issue

[timeOday (582209)]

People should be free to consume whatever media they want to, as long as it isn't hurting anybody no one should have the right to tell me what I can and can't see.

So you're against the ruling too?

Re:Shouldn't be an issue

[babbling (952366)]

This is voluntary censorship, though. Suppose I've bought Kill Bill and want to see it, but not the violent bits, I could've sent it to this company. No one would've forced me to, though.

There is nothing wrong with people viewing censored material when they asked for it to be censored for them. This decision is effectively censoring censorship!

I don't buy the artistic integrity angle at all...

[MarcoAtWork (28889)]

Something tells me that the director's "artistic vision" for example didn't include Bruce Willis saying ""Yippee-ki-yay Mister Falcon." in Die Hard, or "This is what happens whey you find a stranger in the Alps!" in the Big Lebowski: how is that different from what these companies were/are doing? Or is it simply a case of "censoring is ok, as long as the studio does it? The "These films carry our name and reflect our reputations. So we have great passion about protecting our work ... against unauthorized editing," line sounds a bit hypocritical, especially if the companies in question did put some sort of disclaimer (cleaned by cleanflix, whatever) at the movie beginning.

In a perfect world

[bananahammock (595781)]

Now wouldn't it be cool if you could apply this decision to Lucas for having Greedo shoot first - now that's offensive!

not a black and white case

[caseih (160668)]

Reselling altered copyrighted material is an interesting proposition legally. On the other hand, if I buy a DVD or video, I should have to right to view it however I want, and I think I should also have to right to pay someone else to edit it to my liking if I want; it's my DVD after all. Despite everything (no matter which side you take), copyright holders do not have a right to force me to view it the way they want me to. The hard part is that in order to change the DVD, I have to copy it first, which is now a felony. And I think that's the part where these companies have gotten tripped up.

Taking this ruling farther, is it illegal if I publish an MPlayer EDL list for editing out naughty bits of a DVD? I believe Hollywood would want to make it so. On the other hand, when the DVD format was created, it was intended all along that the DVD player could apply edit codes to the video to alter the rating, supply alternate soundtracks, etc. Very little of this has ever been used in the production of DVDs, as Hollywood is the one making them in the first place.

Another defeat for personal freedoms

[Raul654 (453029)]

Result in a nutshell: If I own a DVD, I cannot pay someone to make a copy of that movie for me sans parts I might find offensive. It's not censorship, because *I'm the one asking him to do it for me*. But in yet another defeat for personal freedom (and another win for the moneyed interests), the courts have found that this is a violation of copyright law.

An Alternative

[OYAHHH (322809)]

At,

Least in the USA we are "relatively" free to innovate.

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.

People who want to view the unedited version are happy and those that don't desire to see whatever content can be happy as well.

The original content on the original DVD is not altered in any manner. Copyright is protected.

Religious groups could then produce the "files" to correspond to their own needs and distribute these files via the Internet. The files are uploaded to the special DVD player...

It's basically the same as having Adblock installed in Firefox. You simply delineate what you don't want to see and Firefox delivers what you do want to see. No one is sueing Firefox for eliminating advertisements.

Should be the same for objectionable DVD content.

Re:An Alternative

[masterzora (871343)]

Sounds familiar...

Oh, yeah, http://www.clearplay.com/ [clearplay.com]

In other News...

[andphi (899406)]

The Court also handed down several companion rulings:

First, that closing one's eyes or looking away during commercials, previews, gratuitous violence, sex, or nudity is an abridgement of copyright as it results in a derivative work without the consent of the copyright holders.

Secondly, that because going to the bathroom during the boring parts (and the court in no way implies that there are boring parts in Hollywood movies) also results in the creation of a derivative work, it is also forbidden by law.

Thirdly, that because some persons have been known to talk over or about the soundtrack, dialog, or events of movies, thus creating an unauthorized derivative combination of commentary and the original cinematic release in violation of copyright, movies may only be watched by persons without mouths.

To be clear...

[RyanFenton (230700)]

To be clear, this is NOT a ruling against censorship in any way. This is a ruling that one cannot use the motives of private censorship to in any way go against copyright laws. They'll have to sell their 'services' to the (mostly) corporate owners of the rights to works, rather than directly to customers or retailers.

A fairly appropriate ruling, in the context. But this does mean that when a more automatic method of censorship comes around, then new forms of censorship shouldn't face these same legal barriers. They just have to be blind to which naughty bits and sounds they're covering up, fresh each time, so they're not producing a 'derrivative work' in a saleable form.

Ryan Fenton

Naughty Bits

[by Anonymous Coward]

Any now for your viewing pleasure. Some naughty bits.

B*m
T*ts
Kn*ckers
Semprini

Before the kneejerk reaction from the Slashdotters

[Brian_Ellenberger (308720)]

Don't approve of this action just because you think it only hurts a bunch of "right-wing Christian zealots". Remember fair use! There was a one-to-one copy sold with each of these DVDs---the original and the edited. The filmmakers did not lose one dime, and in fact made money with each copy sold.

So if we are to argue that, if you bought something you have the legal right to do whatever you want to it (Fast Forward through commercials, play on a Linux box, rip to a hard drive), then you cannot allow Hollywood to start acquiring new rights for their so-called "artistic vision". Otherwise, you will find yourself unable to fast forward through scenes (or commercials) because that would violate the "artistic vision" of Hollywood.

Remember folks---it is all about control. Hollywood wants all the control. We cannot surrender even the smallest bit of it, because as soon as we do it establishes legal precedence.

And as for their pure "artistic vision", they regularly violate it when they make full-screen movies, TV versions, and rereleases of the same movie every 10 years.

Re:Awesome

[mtrisk (770081)]

What I don't understand is why Wal-Mart censors things anyway. If people don't like the content, why don't they just, you know, not buy it?

Re:Awesome

[dnoyeb (547705)]

They just, you know, don't buy it. Thats exactly why Wal-mart and every other 'mart' purchases censored versions. Because they care about money and not much else.

Its a remarkable stupid situation where one company can't do something that other companies have done every day.

Re:Awesome

[TenLow (812875)]

It's because the other companies (such as the wal) have enough purchasing power to make the record company release a "clean" version. If the video stores in question were actually a 300 billion dollar chain, they could have just asked the studios nicely for a "clean" version and gotten it.

Re:Awesome

[Radicode (898701)]

Haaa! Now I think I understand why the last time I bought a dvd at walmart, it was only a bunch of short clips of plumbers going to a girl's house, then some vacuum cleaner seller... I was thinking... why did my friend told me to buy that wacko movie. Now I get it! They cut out the violent fighting scenes.

Re:Interesting Hypocrisy

[Sparr0 (451780)]

The rights to the movie belong to the guy (company) that made it. If the airlines pay for a license to show an edited version then that is cool. The company in question here did NOT have permission to distributed edited versions of the movies.