LEGAL LOOPHOLE BRINGS BACK EDITED MOVIES

BY BARBARA DAVIS / April 9, 2007
Brigham Young University's Daily Universe

Utah County said goodbye to edited-movie vendors last summer, but local movie businesses have brought edited movies back by finding a creative way to justify their actions. Flix Club and Cougar Video are renting and selling edited movies, an action outlawed last July in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado. The judge ruled that movie-editing businesses and vendors create injury to creative expression and should shut their doors and call off operations.

So how are these stores getting around this? The ruling that forced movie-editing companies out of business has a legal loophole. Daniel Thompson, owner of Flix Club, 908 S. State, Orem, said movie-editing stores are continuing to operate based on two criteria.

He said under the fair-use premise, editing is permitted if it is for an educational purpose. The second is that these businesses are not actually named in the lawsuit so they are not banned.

Flix Club edits videos such as "Glory" and "The Patriot" for local schools, said Thompson, former owner of the retail locations for Clean Flicks. But he also edits movies that may not be easily identified as educational and some wonder what is educational about "The Matrix."

Some businesses learned of this loophole and began operation a few months after the ruling. Scott J. Mikulecky, member of the Litigation Department of Sherman & Howard's Colorado Springs office and attorney for CleanFlicks of Colorado in the lawsuit that provoked the ruling, said he does not know the details of operations but is skeptical. "There is a valid educational exception," Mikulecky said. "The question is if [certain movies] qualify. I don't see how [some] movies can be made educational."

According to the Motion Picture Association of America Web site, the association is committed to promoting copyright protection and other intellectual property protection. This is so those who create movies, software, music or other works can make a living by creating products that enrich lives. It implements programs to help secure the original product and reduce editing. The Daily Universe attempted to contact a spokesman for the Motion Picture Association but did not have phone calls returned.

Dan Pia, UVSC student from Pasadena, Calif., said he believes movies are a creative effort of many people to produce art, and he is not buying the educational claim. "I think it is ridiculous to allow them [editing companies] to do this," Pia said. He said editing movies is both dishonest and hypocritical. "They are taking advantage of the legal loophole," he said. "And people are hypocritical because they are watching movies they wouldn't choose to watch without the edited parts."

But many families in the area want edited movies and support movie-editing companies. There is a need for edited movies in this area where family values are important, Thompson said. "They [studios] may not realize there is a market here for edited movies," he said. "It is not R-rated movies necessarily that need to be edited; it is about family values in general. The support people here have for edited movies is amazing."

Thompson added that if someone owns a copy of a movie, then the individual should be able to do anything to it. "What if you took 'God's Army' and added profanity to it?" he said. "My response is, do with it what you want. The principle of editing goes both ways."