Movies aren't meat
Everyone seems to be straining for metaphors when describing the editing-for-content performed by Utah's CleanFlicks and similar companies.
A reader leaving a comment on this blog wrote, "When I buy some jeans, I can legally hem them." My own paper's editorial board on Friday, in suggesting people seek out family-friendly films, used the food analogy: "Why go to such efforts to pick the maggots out of one small piece of beef when there is a giant larder of good food right behind you?" (Ewww.) A columnist in the Lowell Sun, in Massachusetts, went for the artistic analogy: "It's like giving the Mona Lisa a nose job."
I agree with the last analogy, because movies aren't just a product or a foodstuff - they are a form of artistic expression, which are protected by copyright law in ways that jeans or meat are not.
Personally, I don't care if you buy a VHS copy of "Showgirls," take it home, unspool the whole thing and roll around naked in the magnetic tape. That's your right as an American. But making money by altering VHS and DVD copies for others? That, according to a U.S. District Court judge, is a violation of copyright law.
My unsolicited advice for Ray Lines, the CEO of CleanFlicks (who defends himself quite well in an interview on NPR's "On the Media") is to become a movie producer. Take the money you were investing in CleanFlicks and bankroll some quality family-friendly movies. You may not make any money (not that you were making much anyway, based on what you said to NPR), but you'd be putting a movie on the video shelf that your customers would watch - and that no court could force you to give back.
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Another good weekend for "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," with $62.2 million - for a 10-day haul of $258.2 million, breaking the 10-day record set by "Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith." (Here's the breakdown from Box Office Mojo.) Meanwhile, the two new releases, "Little Man" and "You, Me and Dupree," topped out slightly north of $21 million each.
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News from the geek front: The 1973-74 Saturday-morning animated version of "Star Trek" will be coming to DVD on Nov. 21.
The series had cheap and cheesy two-dimensional animation, but it did boast the original actors doing the voices and some interesting storylines. (Ringworld author Larry Niven contributed a script, and so did Walter Koenig, the actor who played Chekov.)
It also, according to those in the know, opened the door to bring "Star Trek" back from oblivion and into the movies.
A reader leaving a comment on this blog wrote, "When I buy some jeans, I can legally hem them." My own paper's editorial board on Friday, in suggesting people seek out family-friendly films, used the food analogy: "Why go to such efforts to pick the maggots out of one small piece of beef when there is a giant larder of good food right behind you?" (Ewww.) A columnist in the Lowell Sun, in Massachusetts, went for the artistic analogy: "It's like giving the Mona Lisa a nose job."
I agree with the last analogy, because movies aren't just a product or a foodstuff - they are a form of artistic expression, which are protected by copyright law in ways that jeans or meat are not.
Personally, I don't care if you buy a VHS copy of "Showgirls," take it home, unspool the whole thing and roll around naked in the magnetic tape. That's your right as an American. But making money by altering VHS and DVD copies for others? That, according to a U.S. District Court judge, is a violation of copyright law.
My unsolicited advice for Ray Lines, the CEO of CleanFlicks (who defends himself quite well in an interview on NPR's "On the Media") is to become a movie producer. Take the money you were investing in CleanFlicks and bankroll some quality family-friendly movies. You may not make any money (not that you were making much anyway, based on what you said to NPR), but you'd be putting a movie on the video shelf that your customers would watch - and that no court could force you to give back.
------
Another good weekend for "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," with $62.2 million - for a 10-day haul of $258.2 million, breaking the 10-day record set by "Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith." (Here's the breakdown from Box Office Mojo.) Meanwhile, the two new releases, "Little Man" and "You, Me and Dupree," topped out slightly north of $21 million each.
------
News from the geek front: The 1973-74 Saturday-morning animated version of "Star Trek" will be coming to DVD on Nov. 21.
The series had cheap and cheesy two-dimensional animation, but it did boast the original actors doing the voices and some interesting storylines. (Ringworld author Larry Niven contributed a script, and so did Walter Koenig, the actor who played Chekov.)
It also, according to those in the know, opened the door to bring "Star Trek" back from oblivion and into the movies.
9:59 AM
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