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Judge's decision kills
family-friendly flicks
Ruling against editing movies
spells demise of CleanFilms

Recent legal battles have taken a devastating toll on CleanFilms, Family Flix and other companies that edit scenes containing sex, nudity, profanity and excessive violence from mainstream movies to provide a viewing alternative for families concerned over explicit video content.

In a letter to customers, CleanFilms Chief Executive Officer Ken Roberts regretfully announced that a Colorado ruling has forced the company to close the business. The U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado sided with major film studios July 6, contending that the "mechanical editing parties" violated copyright law.

"After three long years of legal struggles, a judge in Colorado has ruled that we cannot sell or rent edited DVDs anymore," Roberts said. "While we thought very strongly about appealing the decision, the potential costs and risks to the company, its customers and shareholders was just too great. Accordingly, we have agreed to close our doors after a brief winding-up period."

Prior to the decision, CleanFilms countered the studio's motion for summary judgment saying, "... not only will CleanFilms be put out of business and thousands and thousands of Americans will lose their right to watch and enjoy popular movies without being subjected to gratuitous amounts of sex, violence and profanity, but the Court will quash CleanFilms' and the viewing public's most poignant right to criticize the use of that material in movies by opting not to view the particular scenes in movies that contain that material."

"I would like nothing better than to answer all of your questions and provide you with even more information," Roberts told WND. "However I have signed an agreement that says, in part: 'If a member of the press or any other third party inquires into the status of the Action or the dealings between the Parties in our lawsuits, you may say: 'The matter has been settled on mutually agreeable terms, which are confidential.'"

CleanFilms offered approximately 900 edited motion pictures to its subscribers for home viewing and has received 3,000 letters from its members, many stating that without the editing service, they would not have rented or purchased the original motion pictures for viewing in their home.

Two other companies named in the copyright ruling, Play It Clean, and Family Flix no longer have valid web addresses, and a fourth company, CleanFlicks, posted a bulletin on its website: "Pending the outcome of current litigation with the Hollywood studio, this website is currently not accepting new customers."

A message on the website of CleanEditedMovies.com reported the Arizona company Family Flix, owned by a husband and wife Richard and Sandi Teraci, has closed its film-editing business. The couple intends to create their own motion picture studio outside Hollywood.

"We will be creating blockbuster films with top-level actors. Films you'll love, but won't have to cover your children's eyes or ears, or as an adult, not having to be subjected to someone else's low standards," the Teracis said.

Ridiculous!

So what do parents have these days to help control what their children are exposed to?

Are they going to next outlaw the V-chip, TiVo and the like???????

We need to start a revolution here!

I'm mad now.

M.L.

Axing sex, swearing from films violates copyright: court (http://forums.christiansunite.com/index.php?topic=12191.0) :P :P :P

Deleting swearing, sex and violence from films on DVD or VHS violates copyright laws, a U.S. judge has ruled in a decision that could end controversial sanitizing done for some video-rental chains, cable services and the internet.

The ruling stemmed from a lawsuit brought by 16 U.S. directors — including Steven Spielberg, Robert Redford and Martin Scorsese — against three Utah-based companies that "scrub" films.

Judge Richard P. Matsch 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.

"Their objective ... is to stop the infringement because of its irreparable injury to the creative artistic expression in the copyrighted movies," the judge wrote. "There is a public interest in providing such protection."

The act of sanitizing films began in 1998 when one company, Sunrise Family Video, started deleting the scenes showing a nude Kate Winslet from the blockbuster Titanic.

Several other companies, mostly in Utah, quickly sprang up to follow its lead and there are currently an estimated 90 film scrubbing companies in the United States.

Directors applaud ruling against 'unauthorized editing'

Michael Apted, the president of the Directors Guild of America, said directors could feel vindicated by the decision.

"These films carry our name and reflect our reputations. So we have great passion about protecting our work ... against unauthorized editing," said Apted in a statement on the guild's website.

"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."

Scrubbing companies vow to continue fight

Matsch ordered the companies named in the suit — CleanFlicks, Play It clean Video and CleanFilms — to immediately stop producing, creating and renting out the scrubbed films.

"We're disappointed," said Ray Lines, the head of CleanFlicks. "This is a typical case of David vs. Goliath, but in this case, Hollywood rewrote the ending. We're going to continue to fight."

See, it's this quote that's what gets me:

"While we thought very strongly about appealing the decision, the potential costs and risks to the company, its customers and shareholders was just too great..."

Who is more important? The company shareholders or the consumers? Is there any company nowadays who has the consumers' best interests at heart? Sad state of affairs that we have to live in.

LJ
The quick answer is that there are very few that do.

However ANY business is in business to make money and not give away free goods and services.  If they continued on their financial backers would have pulled out.  They would have had no money to operate.  And in order to get money they would have had to raise the prices.  Cut corners and ultimately affect the customers.  Who would have just decided to stop renting from them. And the money would have dried up down that avenue as well.

I think the real issue is that these companies started this off and probably went about it the wrong way.  the copyright laws simply are "No unauthorized reproduction, distribution, public showing of movie XYZ"  basically you are violating the copyright laws if you take a movie and edit it, then distribute, rent, show it in a theatre, etc. if you do not have permission from the holder of the copyright.  I do not think these shops first went to the studios to ask permission to do so.  If they had permission then they could come back and say XYZ said we could do this.

The solution is to just not go and see these movies.  If it is questionable in the least bit then opt to not see it.  Instead go see the movies that are not quesitonable.  And we have seen that before.  ANd it is happening again today.  We see more and more animated childrens movies coming out and taking off up the charts.  There is a drive for good clean entertainment.  The downside is that we are seeign more horror flicks and such coming out that make the 80's look minute in comparisson (shame most of the new movies are just remakes of the ones in the 80's)

Brother Jerry,

I think you have mentioned the real answer here. Christians should STOP spending a penny for any kind of media that contains questionable content. If all Christians got together and did this consistently, it wouldn't take long for many to get the MESSAGE. I honestly think that many Christians are part of the problem. Why do many self-proclaimed Christians pay money to obtain filth and garbage? Christians could greatly influence many things if we JUST SAY NO!

It does appear that Christians are beginning to have more choices. Our number of choices will keep increasing if we simply spend our money in clean and moral ways.

Love In Christ,
Tom

John 10:8-10 NASB  "All who came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. "I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

I'm not going to argue the moral implications here. But from a legal standpoint, they broke international copyright laws.... Seriously, what the did was commit a serious crime.

If I took any movie, re edited it, and sold it, what does that make me? A thief. These people who cut the content from movies are thieves. So, what's more important? The moral content of movies, or the commandment "Thou Shalt Not Steal."

I think it's hipocritical to claim there is some unjustice here. Regardless of the original content, which we cannot control, we cannot sit by and say "Yeah, it's perfectly alright to steal from the owners and remake and resell the same product." Are we criminals? I know I'm not.

Newski

Welcome to the forums.  And you state the point that I had also made.  I do not know all of the legalities of what went on.  But at least initially it looks like they had taken the movies and did their edits and then resold.  Which is in violation...however that is such a blatant violation that I cannot think that they all would have done that without getting permission.

But then like I said...I do not know all of the legalities that went on. 

Film sanitizers are hard at work again

Film editors were back in the cutting room just a few months after a federal appeals judge ruled last year that they could no longer edit movies to make them acceptable family fare.

Thanks, in large part, to what they say is a loophole in copyright law that allows cuts for educational purposes, some of the companies that were ordered to turn over their inventory to Hollywood studios instead are scrubbing more movies, and other firms are getting into the market.

Film editors say the education clause can be used to get around the July 2006 ruling by Judge Richard P. Matsch that sanitizing movies on DVD or VHS tape violates federal copyright laws.

The ruling was thought to have marked the end of a 3-year legal battle between several film editing companies and 16 Hollywood directors started by a Colorado CleanFlicks store.

Matsch ordered Utah-based CleanFlicks and others named in the suit, including Play It Clean Video of Ogden and CleanFilms of Provo, to stop deleting racy scenes to clean up movies for rental and ordered the businesses to turn over their inventory to the movie studios within five days.

At the time of the ruling, CleanFlicks said it sold scrubbed films to as many as 90 video stores nationwide, about half of them in Utah, home to a large population of Mormons.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints discourages members from watching R-rated films.

A few months ago I finally realized that movies like superman, fantastic four and x-men were bad. I threw them out

Brothers and Sisters,

If I understand all of this right, the people doing the sanitizing are buying the films, paying all of the fees, and sending in all of the royalties. They aren't stealing anything at all - just removing part of the product before it is sold. The people buying the product are well aware that the bad parts were removed. The exact same thing happens to edited films that are eventually shown on TV. Hollywood makes tons of money on those edited films, and nothing is being stolen from them if all of the fees and payments are being made.

Let's get real - Hollywood is upset that the dirty parts are being taken out of their films, but they aren't upset at all about receiving the payments and royalties. What they really want is to receive the same money but leave all the dirty stuff in. That isn't going to happen for TV, and it won't happen with Christians, so they can't have their cake and eat it too. Maybe the real answer is just to say NO to the dirty stuff whether it's been edited or not. Hollywood wouldn't get paid then, and it would be interesting to see if their tune changed when the money stopped coming in. We really aren't talking about theft here - rather some artistic principle of the producer or whoever. They are getting paid, and many folks in Hollywood would be hollering bloody murder if the money stopped coming in. IN FACT - many of the more intelligent types in Hollywood do the editing themselves for various markets if they want to stay in business. If they don't want money from Christians, that's fine with me. It doesn't sound very smart on their part, but Hollywood isn't known for being very smart.