Hollywood vs. Censors

Hollywood studios and the Directors Guild of America sued Utah-based CleanFlicks, CleanFilms and Play It Clean Video, Arizona-based Family Flix USA and CleanFlicks of Colorado for providing "edited" copies of their movies on DVD. The "sanitized" copies are supposed to have scenes with sex, nudity, violence and profanity removed.

This is the type of fight that I hope both sides lose but of course one side must win.

And the winner is ...... Hollywood! Well, I guess I would be more upset if they lost (surprise surprise!) 'coz censorship is a worse enemy to our civilization. From an artist's point of view, I certainly don't want to see my work being altered and re-published in any way without my consent so that my artistic values won't be jeopardized.

Of course artistic values have nothing to do with why the censors lost. Remember MP3.com? They got sued and lost for providing "online digital locker of MP3" to users who already own the CDs. The moral of that story was: if any additional money is to be made from copyrighted work, the copyright holder would want it. Not only did the censors not seem to have learned this lesson, but also they gave away a free lesson to Hollywood: there's a market for "sanitized" copies of their movies!