10 July, 2006

Salt Lake Tribune - Utah film sanitizers ordered to cut it

Utah film sanitizers ordered to cut it out:
Hollywood has been fighting Utah companies for eight years over editing sex, violence and language from hit movies.

Here's how the story unfolded:
* In 1998, Sunrise Family Video in American Fork offered to edit nude scenes from "Titanic" for $5 for people who purchased the movie.
* Soon after, businesses like CleanFlicks began making edited copies of movies for sale. Other Utah companies like Trilogy Studios and ClearPlay, meanwhile, developed software for DVD players that skips over objectionable material automatically.
* CleanFlicks of Colorado, then affiliated with CleanFlicks of Utah, filed suit in 2002 against the Directors Guild of America and 16 filmmakers, including Robert Redford and Steven Spielberg, to force a legal ruling on the issue.
* Several months later, the directors fired back with a countersuit, which was eventually joined by Hollywood studios.
* While the case lumbered through the courts, President Bush signed the Family Movie Act in 2005, which legalized technologies used by companies like ClearPlay.
* Thursday, the U.S. District Court in Colorado ruled that CleanFlicks and similar companies are violating copyright law and must stop production.

1 comment:

B.D. said...

Was that ruling a no-brainer or what! Why do people have to spend years and thousands of dollars in courts, just to conclude the obvious?

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