There's a debate going on in Utah about filtering movies to make them more family friendly. One company was forced out of business for providing cleaned up versions of popular movies for sale and rent. But, the company ClearPlay, was allowed to continue to sell technology that will filter movies for you by using a special player or computer. The reasoning behind letting ClearPlay continue is that it does not actually provide an altered copy of the movie to the customer.OK, what I see as the bottom line here is this, should someone else be allowed to edit copyrighted work, provide it to the public, and on top of that make a profit? I say no way. If a movie is edited to remove the "bad stuff", who determines what's bad? Where do we draw the line? And I don't see any difference in providing the edited copy for sale, or a service that provides the filter for you (at a cost). Again, who's determining what should be filtered out? Anyway you look at it a copyrighted work is being altered.
Movie studios, directors and other muckity mucks have the choice of providing their works in an alternate "clean" format. But if they don't, they understand they will lose family viewers for that film. It's their vision, their work, their baby. It's not up to anyone else to determine what should be edited out of the movie and what should stay in. Am I wrong? Thoughts?
1. I have never understood why a movie studio or production company would allow their movies to be edited for TV viewing but not offer the same edit version as a purchasable item. I wished that when my boys were growing up that many of the 80's and 90's movies out then just had a few words or a few small scenes edited out of them to make watching the movie more enjoyable for the entire family. Removing certain words (or dubbing in something in its place) should not change the characteristic of most movies. I understand that there will be some movies that this would never work on because the entire movie is filled with and based on sex or violence or bad language. I would think that studios would be trying to make every buck they can. I have never met a parent that did not wish that edited movie were available. The funny thing is that with today’s DVD technology movies could have alternate audio tracks and even remove a few scenes with out having to release two different discs. This would allow studios to offer edited films at a very minimal cost. I hope someday that the people that make these decisions wake up and realize the untapped market that is out there
Posted at 7:17PM on Sep 27th 2006 by Michael Massey