*sputter*

[fox]

okay, it's probably not much of a mystery how i feel about "sanitized versions" of films on DVD.  (cleverclever people buy a DVD, edit out [what they consider to be] objectionable content, and sell it at a markup.)  i hear what they're saying about just wanting to be able to see a film without sex and violence, and my response is (a) there are plenty of films that legitimately don't have sex or violence; or (b) so become a producer.  you don't get to screw around with existing work and sell it at a profit.  worst case scenario, these guys could end up hurting us, by which i mean fans, who are so careful not to make a profit with our screwing-around-with-existing-work.  we do what we do because we like the original, man.  we add; we don't subtract.

but anyway.  this paragraph made me choke:

Some films are beyond editing.  Family Flix didn't even try to sanitize the ultra-violent "Kill Bill, Vol. 1" because it would have been reduced to almost nothing.  For the same reason, it won't touch movies in which a character appears "immodestly dressed" in too many scenes.  It also has not tackled Mel Gibson's violent but reverential "Passion of the Christ," because, [Sandra] Teraci [of Family Flix] says, "everyone has already seen it."

aslkasjalkjh'a;;lkad;ldf

GRAR.

Comments

[sheltiesong.livejournal.com]

o.O

Wow.

Especially what with working in copyright, that makes me twitch! *GROWL*

'Cause you can sure as hell bet they aren't going through the proper channels to get permission to do these edits.

It's one thing to do fic and songvids, where no profit is gained and it's done for love of the material. This?

*sigh* I hope someone C&D's their ass.

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

channels? permission? they're buying the DVDs at ordinary retail stores and editing them on their home computers. they are now the subject of a handful of lawsuits.

just, as you say, it's one thing to do it without profit and etc., for the love of the material, and quite another to, to, to, gah. i do have a fairly stubborn "death of the author" streak that says listen, once the work is out there, it doesn't belong to the creator of it anymore -- but, like, that streak is constantly at war with the feeling that as a consumer, one of the ways i approach a thing is with awareness that someone made it the way s/he made it for a reason. it's not quite the post-modern thing where i must know all about the writer before the text can have its full meaning -- but i don't read the last page of a book first, because as a writer i take considerable care to set things up and i don't want to cheat someone else out of the ability to surprise me, etc. -- which is really more a comment about spoilers than anything else, but it applies here too. a filmmaker makes a film, and he makes all of it.

(and i used to work in IP too. [g] not a lot of copyright, though. patents, patents, patents, as far as the eye could see.)

[chains-of-irony.livejournal.com]

Woo! Barthes! I have to have a "death of the author" streak, I own an Anne Rice fanfic community. *fears*

Really hope this doesn't affect fans who create for the love it it, like you said.

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

[beats up anne rice just on general principle][g]

[ccr1138.livejournal.com]

This is one of my pet peeves, but I am on the opposite side of the argument. My dissent is on my lj here: http://www.livejournal.com/users/ccr1138/15929.html

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

it's the profit-making that pisses me off the most. all the rest is frustrating, but meh. i don't, for example, have a problem with the DVD player mentioned in the Post article that allows people to mute, skip, whatever without harming the DVD -- i think it's redundant as the remote already comes with buttons for that, but whatever. but you don't get to re-do someone else's work and then make a profit from it. i say again: grar.

[ccr1138.livejournal.com]

Depends on what you mean by profit. A charge over and above the cost of the DVD in order to pay for the editor's time is perfectly okay. He is providing a service, and he deserves to get paid for it. Even if he were simply buying the DVDs at wholesale prices and selling them for a profit WITHOUT EDITING, there's nothing wrong with that.

Profit is not a bad thing. It is a very good thing. It is what drives our whole economy. If the DVD editing service is making too much profit, other people will enter the field, driving down the price and profit and providing competition. This benefits the consumer. The consume in turn will choose the service that best meets their needs, and the ones that don't get enough business will fail. This all works because of profit.

I agree people should not be able to steal (violate copyright) and profit from it. These services do not do that. They buy legitimate copies of the DVDs, edit them, and give the new version plus the disabled original to the consumer. The movie studios are getting paid for each and every DVD sold. In fact, the studios are BENEFITTING financially from the service, because most of the customers simply would not buy the DVDs at all if they could not have edited versions.

I wish the studios would wise up and make the edited (TV/airplane) versions of movies available for purchase.

[juice817.livejournal.com]

exactly. the really really stupid thing is that those edited versions are already created by the studio/director, and there are even (usually) multiple edited versions, but the studios essentially hide them away, and won't sell them even after they've aired on networks. it makes no sense to me, because the fact that these companies (family flix, cleanflicks) get so much business should show the studios that there IS a market out there for family-friendly entertainment.

[servalan.livejournal.com]

If they're making anything resembling significant money (i.e. real numbers of people are buying these things), then it's a clear cry to the production studios to get in on the deal.

The studios will end up contracting these people and making more of the profits themselves, or will have their own "sanitation" departments to have a second version of the movies.

It'll be a lot like the whole napster thing. It uesd to be illegal (and 'fannish' in many ways), but now the official people have finally caught a clue and used it to their own advantage.

My advice: Supply and Demand says, "Fuggedaboudit."

[wholenother.livejournal.com]

(a) I haven't see Passion of the Christ -- and I don't intend to.

(b) It is precisely this sort of action that I fear will end up being the excuse/reason for a crack-down on derivative works of the sort you produce. While I have no personal interest in slash per se, the derivative works thing drives me crazy. Vaidhyanathan and his observation that not everything that is produced by someone other than the original author(s), is derivative, and is worthy of being permissible can be a parody, but only parodies are allowed . . .