'Sanitizers' of Home Video Lose in Court

'SANITIZERS' OF HOME VIDEO LOSE IN COURT
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Roger Vincent]
A federal judge has issued final cut to studios, ruling that companies that snip out potentially offending material from movies for home viewing violate copyright laws. Businesses that edit sex, profanity and violence out of DVD and VHS copies in an appeal to some viewers' tastes are "illegitimate," said Richard P. Matsch of U.S. District Court in Denver. Four companies that do so must stop and turn over their copies of expurgated films to Hollywood's major studios. "Audiences can now be assured that the films they buy or rent are the vision of the filmmakers who made them and not the arbitrary choices of a third-party editor," Directors Guild of America President Michael Apted said. The studios and several prominent directors -- including Steven Spielberg, Robert Altman and Steven Soderbergh -- have been fighting movie sanitizers in court since 2002, saying that retailers such as CleanFlicks had no right to copy and distribute their own versions. Retailers asserted that their cleaned-up copies made fair use of the movies under copyright law and that they bought one copy of the original for each modified version they rented or sold. That ensured more sales and exposure than such movies would have received had they not been edited to be more wholesome, the retailers argued. "We're disappointed," CleanFlicks Chief Executive Ray Lines said. "This is a typical case of David versus Goliath, but in this case, Hollywood rewrote the ending. We're going to continue to fight."
http://www.latimes.com/business/printedition/la-fi-clean10jul10,1,7949730.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-business
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