Fair use vs. Censorship in the Cleanflix decision

H

Heist

Moderator
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/06/07/11/169230.shtml

If I create a piece of software and sell a copy, the purchaser must conform to the restrictions I place on the distribution of that work. This includes my restriction that they not make a few thousand copies to give to their friends.

The fact that these people are performing a service that some people find valuable is no excuse. The solution is to work with the studios to create a new version of the work in question. If the studio decides they do not wish to do so, there is absolutely no reason the studio should be compelled to release said work for modification by a third party to appease anyone's sensibilities.

In short, there are legal and illegal ways to perform this service. The companies in question chose the illegal ways and now must face the consequences. If this annoys anyone, I suggest voting out our current crop of representatives, as the last few votes on copyright have come down very firmly on the side of copyright holders.
 
Fair use vs. Censorship

If I buy a book, then that book belongs to me. I can go through it and black out any words that I find offensive!!! Or I can hire someone with my same set of values to do it for me!!! Once the item is sold it no longer belongs to the Author or film maker.
The film industry make clean copies of their films available to the Airlines and to Television, so why don't they offer this same product to the public?
Either sell clean copies or allow them to be cleaned up. Either way they will sell more product!!! And that is what they want more than anything else, The Money!!!
 
If I buy a book, then that book belongs to me. I can go through it and black out any words that I find offensive!!! Or I can hire someone with my same set of values to do it for me!!! Once the item is sold it no longer belongs to the Author or film maker.
Click to expand...

I assume your analogy includes reselling the marked book, perhaps at a college bookstore.* First and foremost, copyright laws governing books are different than electronic media. Second, you are not altering the original content, but adding annotations. Third, you are not taking your copy of the book, complete with annotations, typesetting it, and then running off a few thousand copies.

*Unfortunately, that is not physically possible with a DVD, as it is not a read/write technology. Conceptually they may be doing so. But physically, they are purchasing a copy, altering it, then printing multiple copies of this cut. That they offset this by purchasing a number of originals equal to the number of altered works they ship is an attempt at good faith; but the mechanics of the operation are a clear violation of the copyright laws.

Here's the sequence of steps, with illegal steps noted:

Movie studio publishes a movie
Editing studio purchases a copy
Editing studio alters this copy
Editing studio prints this copy to DVD or VHS*
Editing studio sells the altered version*
Editing studio purchases a copy offset the sale of the edited copy

It is that point where someone burns a modified version of a copyrighted work to a new medium, then sells that, that makes this illegal. Again, the purchase of a new copy to offset the sale is morally admirable, but does not alter the illegal nature of the edited copy.
 
CleanFlix is lame. Honestly, if I produced a piece of work I wouldn't care. I'm still getting my money regardless. It still goes out to a lot of people. Etc. What some people do with it is rahter unimportant. Hell if they set it on fire I still received my money.
 
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