Court Halts Sales of Cleaned-Up Movies

Court Halts Sales of Cleaned-Up Movies
A federal court has halted the further sales and distribution of motion picture videos that have been edited to remove sex, violence, and offensive-language scenes. Judge Richard P. Matsch ruled that four companies that engaged in bowdlerizing the films were violating the copyright holders' rights "to control the reproduction and distribution of the protected work in their original form." Companies named in the suit include CleanFlicks, Family Flix, Play It Clean Video and CleanFilms. In an interview with Salt Lake City's Deseret Morning News, Daniel Thompson, who owns four CleanFlicks outlets in Utah, said, "I think it's ridiculous that you can't watch a movie without seeing sex, nudity or extreme violence. I don't understand why they're trying to keep that in there." But in a statement, Michael Apted, president of the Directors Guild of America, said, "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 choice of a third-party editor. ... We have great passion about protecting our work, which is our signature and brand identification, against unauthorized editing."
IMDB