THE FILTH STAYS IN THE PICTURE

July 10, 2006
The Guardian

Hollywood last week won a protracted legal battle against companies which produce sanitised versions of its films on DVD when a US judge ordered those firms to turn over all existing copies to studio lawyers for destruction within five days of his ruling.

Senior district court judge Richard Matsch of Colorado ruled that editing movies to delete objectionable language, sex and violence was an "illegitimate business" that hurt Hollywood studios and directors who owned the movie rights.

The order affects the likes of Utah-based CleanFlicks, CleanFilms and Play It Clean Video, Arizona-based Family Flix USA and another CleanFlicks, from Colorado, all of whom have been editing films for violence, sex and bad language, in the face of the studios' wrath. The fight started in August 2002 when CleanFlicks of Utah filed a suit against the Directors Guild of America and 16 leading directors, seeking a court ruling clarifying its right to market the videos on First Amendment grounds. The DGA and directors countersued the following month. By December 2002, the case had snowballed when eight major studios filed suit against CleanFlicks and its peers for copyright infringement.

Utah's CleanFlicks, which says it is the largest distributor of edited movies, declared it would continue to fight studios for the right to produce edited movies.

It claims it should have the legal right to do so because it purchases one copy of a DVD for every edited movie it produces, and includes the original version with the new version when mailing packages to customers. David Schachter, attorney for CleanFlicks of Colorado, said yesterday that his client was unlikely to seek a stay on the injunction, but that it did not preclude others from choosing to do so. A posting on Family Flix's website reported that the company had decided to close its doors after five years as a result of the ruling. The company would routinely edit content for homosexuality, "perversion" and cohabitation - its version of Brokeback Mountain must have been a sight to see.