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Studios take action against "family friendly" editing facilities (1 Viewer)

Damin J Toell

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I think those suggestions are silly, so I've come up with this karaoke analogy to poop on them.
I'm not certain you need to analogize to karaoke in order to prove the legal point. As for how people react to it, I think MovieMask is distasteful because it does one thing and one thing only: elminates whatever it (or its programmers, rather) have decided is somehow "bad." Unlike karaoke, which can result in a infinite range of performances from people (wonderful, bad, sarcastic, romantic, etc.), MovieMask has a single pre-defined moral position that it attempts to implement. As such, they're not even remotely the same thing. Karaoke is more like Adobe Premiere, allowing for a wide range of modifications. MovieMask, however, is more akin to your mother making you close your eyes during the "bad" parts. It's not surprising to me at all that people find this to be a distasteful use of technology.

DJ
 

Glenn Overholt

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I had to toss this one back up to the top of the heap.

What hasn't been mentioned before, and I haven't seen it up until now, is that there is a membership fee, so if you join up you become part of a co-op, so a member would be an end-user too. Doesn't this change things?

Glenn
 

Damin J Toell

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What hasn't been mentioned before, and I haven't seen it up until now, is that there is a membership fee, so if you join up you become part of a co-op, so a member would be an end-user too. Doesn't this change things?
It shouldn't. If people could "transfer" their Fair Use rights so easily, then any commercial entity could become a "co-op" and infringe copyrights at will. The "co-op" thing is a red herring that I doubt will have much bearing on the final disposition of the case.

DJ
 

Steve Phillips

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A chain of LDS bookstores here in Las Vegas have huge banners above their stores that read: RENT EDITED HOLLYWOOD MOVIES HERE.

Amazing.

I'm sure that draws them in....
 

Jeff Kleist

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Well, the Mormon church can certainly afford a lawsuit if it comes to that, probably much more than CleanFlicks, MovieMask or the ilk
 

Glenn Overholt

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Jeff, I don't know about Movie Mask, but Clean Flicks is a co-op, so all of the members own it... but, and I won't go any farther than this, the Clean Flicks managers that I have seen on the tube are Mormans.

Glenn
 

Jeff Kleist

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Glenn, I'm positive you're right. Notice how many locations are in Utah, a state with about an 85%+ Mormon population. And I'm sure that this store is renting Cleanflicks discs/tapes.

Seems to me that they're trying to squeeze as much cash as possible as quickly as possible before they get shut down
 

Steve Phillips

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I will say that I used to live in Salt Lake City (where the majority of the population are NOT LDS) and while they have Clean Flicks stores, there are tons of other stores to rent unrated/cult/horror stuff. They have more of a market for that in Salt Lake than in Las Vegas!

Leave SLC though, and it gets more conservative.
 

Jonathan Burk

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Well, the Mormon church can certainly afford a lawsuit if it comes to that
Before this turns into a religous discussion and gets the thread closed, it should be pointed out the the "Mormon" church has never edited films, and never endorsed these edited movies. What the Mormon church has done is told its members to use their own judgement to avoid films that encourage immorality or sin, especially those with profanity, sex and violence. Many members avoid rated R movies for this reason, but would still like to see them.
Because of this, some entrepenurial Mormons have acted on their own to satisfy the demand, starting with a trimmed Titanic in '98. These Mormon bookstores that carry the edited tapes in Las Vegas aren't owned by the Church. They are independent businesses, privately owned, that cater to a Mormon clientelle, but they aren't actually owned by the Church. (One such chain of bookstores, Deseret Book, is partly owned by the Church, but since it is still a seperate business entity, I'm sure their liablity is seperate from the actual Church's.)
To summarize: the Mormon Church isn't editing or distributing edited videos. Many Mormons chose not to see PG-13 or R rated films, while others chose to see edited versions of PG-13 or R rated films. Others chose to see unedited PG-13 and R rated films. Either way, the "Church" doesn't care; it's up to the individual members.
While the whole "edited movie" movement may be focused in the Mormon community (i.e. Utah and Idaho), it has since become evident that there is a much larger demand among families all over the country, and among people who just don't care for excessive profanity, sex or violence in their films, and still wish to enjoy them in an edited form.
 

Jeff Kleist

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Thanks Jonathan, when I made the original comment based off of "LDS Bookstore", to me that implied a bookstore owned and operated by the church like the ZCMI stores (dunno if those are still around, what can I say I read a lot of Great Brain books as a kid).
 

Steve Phillips

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I'd have to disagree that the LDS church does not "endorse" these edited versions.

Also, past LDS presidents have been very vocal on the church's official position about R rated films.

None of this is meant in a negative way; these are simply facts. These subjects DO come up during sermons...
 

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