A story in my local paper discussed a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Denver by an attorney (Robert Huntsman) who has developed a technology to “block” profanity, sex or violence out of movies, and by a company CleanFlicks that uses a similar technology.
Ignoring the issues of whether this is a “good idea” from your own artistic sensibilities…do these companies have the legal right to do this?
Should I be able to purchase said device from Mr. Huntsman, bring it home, and run a DVD through it to produce a “cleaner” product. (I have no idea how “well” this product works in producing the desired outcome)
Or, if I am a video rental company who buys the videos from a distributor…should I be able to re-edit them and then rent them as “sanitized” videos (let’s assume that they are clearly labeled in some fashion as being a “re-edited” product)
To respond to your point DDG, does that mean that the makers of Sharpies and scissors are out of business, since they are “editing tools” for the Huck Finn hypothetical?
Should you be able to create/sell/buy/use editing equipment? yes.
Should you be able to take someone else’s property, alter it as you see fit and then profit from the altered work? no.
Copyright - making changes to a film does not make it a new work - I cannot replace the background music in a scene and claim that the result is a new movie. You cannot clip the naughty bits and call the result a new work - it is still the same work, covered by the same copyright.
So much for law.
Ethics are another matter, and deserve and have had separate threads.
Apparently some in the film industry don’t think I should be able to purchase the kind of “editing” equipment proposed by the attorney
Isn’t this what many rappers have done…sample exisiting music, alter it…and create a new tune? I realize that there have been some lawsuits involving artists “borrowing” from other musical artists…but how to explain all the sampling without permission…and apparently without lawsuit in many cases?
Copyright - making changes to a film does not make it a new work - I cannot replace the background music in a scene and claim that the result is a new movie. You cannot clip the naughty bits and call the result a new work - it is still the same work, covered by the same copyright.
So much for law.
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Well IANAL …which is why I posed the OP as a question rather than an affirmative position.
I’m not so sure that the law is as clear cut as you put it (although i welcome input from our resident attys)
To extend my reply…apparently happyheathen thinks it’s OK for me to buy the original DVD or VHS, and re-edit them on a device that I purchased for myself.
What about if I buy the DVD…take it to my neighbor Bob, who owns one of these machines, and HE edits it. Still OK?
What if Bob says sure…but I’ll charge you x$ for my time to edit the video that, again, YOU own…still OK?
I think that CleanFlicks is trying to argue (who knows how successfully) that since each customer “owns” the original video through a co-op arrangement…that they (CleanFlicks) are doing what the neighbor Bob is doing.
beagledave, virtually all rappers these days pay a licensing fee and/or obtain permission from the copyright holders before using them in their own recordings. Lawsuits were filed back in the early days of sampling, and now clearing sample rights is a mini-industry unto itself.
I don’t know that a someone who purchases a DVD does have a clear right to edit it for his own pleasure. Which isn’t to say it’s illegal; it’s just that I’ve never heard of a case which decided it one way or another.
Yes, you, Bob, anyone can edit it - it is the derivation of income from the resultant product that is at issue.
The “fair use” defense in an interesting wrinkle - I wouldn’t buy it, but I’m not the judge.
The ownership bit is transparent - if the customer had purchased the item and requested it be “cleaned”, they’d have a case.
But I would argue that CleanFlicks creates its market by offering pre-edited versions. It’s a clear point (to me) that CleanFlicks is deriving its income by unauthorized appropiation of the work (if they were so dumb as to duplicate a single source, we wouldn’t be discussing the matter - the purchase of an original (and the license so derived) is a nice fig leaf, but still a fig leaf).
Then again, I can’t decide how much of this is copyright law vs. contract law - even if the court were to rule that such editing fell under “fair use”, judgement could be granted under contract law - the seller presumably did not have license to modify the work, only to resell it.
Again, if only the customer had brought the work to CleanFlicks and asked them as an agent of the licensee to edit out the nasty stuff, they’d be in the clear (I think, so far[sup]*[/sup])- just as I can take a copyrighted work to the local shop and have it transferred from film to video - if I tell the shop to clip the credits, they will - all nice and legal.
If the shop were to start advertising “no credits” versions of the film, there would be a problem.
my $0.02: the copyright law is becoming ridiculously restrictive - folks like CleanFlicks are not helping the cause
Isn’t there something about ‘moral rights’ that could apply here?
As I recall, moral rights are always retained by the artist, even if he sells the commercial rights. So if someone writes a great song, he can stop the country of FascistStan from adopting it as their national anthem.
I’m just wondering if this could apply to the editing of the artists work to meet a standard he doesn’t approve of.
happyheathen, derivation of income has relatively little to do with copyright law. You can easily break copyright law without earning a single penny from the copy. I cannot take a Stephen King novel, make xerox copies of it, and then give away the copies for free. Nor can I (legally) take make a mix CD of my favorite songs and then give away copies of that. (Do lots of people do it? Sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s legal.)
That’s why it’s called copy-right and not income-right.
What Clean Flix is doing is clearly not fair use, which is a very narrow provision explicitly created to allow quotation in public debate.
I am aware that profit is not a factor in copyright law.
My point was to differentiate CleanFlicks, from ‘you, Bob, anyone’ - the difference being distribution (with or without profit, but without profit, they wouldn’t be in business, and we wouldn’t have this thread).
And I’d love to be there if/when they assert that “fair use” means “everything EXCEPT small sections” - hey, I’d bet the judge would get a giggle out of that one
“A San Fernando Valley, Calif., man announced today that he is offering a new film editing service that will insert violent and pornographic images into classic Hollywood movies.”
Brilliant….
