USA: BREACH OF COPYRIGHT ROW AS ENTREPRENEURS SELL RE-EDITED DVDS AND EDITING SOFTWARE TO CENSURE OBJECTIONAL CONTENT FROM FILMS.

Record ID: 393042

  • Title: USA: BREACH OF COPYRIGHT ROW AS ENTREPRENEURS SELL RE-EDITED DVDS AND EDITING SOFTWARE TO CENSURE OBJECTIONAL CONTENT FROM FILMS.
  • Date: 28th September 2002
  • Summary: VARIOUS: FILTERED CLIP OF "THE PATRIOT" PLAYED ON A LAPTOP COMPUTER
  • Embargoed: 13th October 2002 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES AND VARIOUS FILM LOCATIONS
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA9OG4NKNTO7ER1AHJFJFSKB8JL
  • Story Text: Entrepreneurs are selling re-edited dvds or editing software that expunge potentially objectionable content from movies. The movie industry says this represents a violation of their ownership and creativity, but users say it's a matter of choice.
    Entrepreneurs are selling re-edited dvds or editing software that expunge potentially objectionable content from movies. The practice has provoked outrage among Hollywood directors. The Directors Guild of America, the union representing the directors, filed a lawsuit attempting to block about a dozen of companies from distributing unauthorized versions of films. Directors including Michael Apted, whose work includes "The World is not Enough" and "Nell" say the filtering is an assault on their creative efforts and copyright law.
    "You're buying a brand, so you should know the brand you're buying. If you have different versions of this film, different versions of my work out there, how do you know what the hell you're buying," Apted says.
    But companies that create the filtering technology see things a different way. Bill Aho is the CEO of ClearPlay, a Utah-based movie filtering company.
    "We have the right to watch a movie any way we want. We use the remote control or we use our other features -- we use picture-in-picture -- and we can do as we please. Now what you have, is you have Hollywood lawyers trying to take those rights away from families. And I don't think families are going to take that,"
    Aho says. Aho also denies that the filtering represents censorship.
    The filtering technology is catching on among some early adapters of technology. In Los Angeles, the Kuhlenschmidt family is a regular watcher of ClearPlayed movies. The father, Richard Kuhlenschmidt, says there is already a huge body of filtered movies.
    "The studios have actually been doing this for years. They have been editing their films and the films have been playing on TV, they've been playing on airplanes. If they would release those to the public, to parents, there wouldn't be an issue," Kuhlenschmidt says.
    Kuhlenschmidt's wife, Betty-Jo Tilley, agrees, arguing the desire to protect one's children is universal.
    "I would say generally that rather than a need to respect a filmmaker's considerations, that our concept of parenting and how we would like to raise our children takes precedence certainly as I believe any parents, even a filmmaker as a parent, would feel," Tilley says.
    The movie filtering companies have responded to the DGA's legal challenge. In August, CleanFlicks, another Utah-based filtering company, filed suit against 16 Hollywood directors, including Steven Spielberg, Robert Redford, and Sydney Pollack. That suit asked the court to guarantee the right to re-edit movies under free speech rights guaranteed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Both sides appear to be preparing for a protracted legal fight. Director Michael Apted believes the future of the movie industry hangs in the balance.
    "Once you want to do a nice family version of "Blackhawk Down," you might easily want to do a sexy version of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves." So once you allow entrepreneurs, just for profit, to take your work and do what they want without any control, we feel there could be no end to that," Apted says.
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