Archive
| Volume 81 | January 2008 | Number 2 |
Balancing the Scales: Expanding the Family Movie Act to Protect Consumers After Clean Flicks of Colorado, LLC v. Soderbergh
Joel M. Purles
81 S. Cal. L. Rev. 351
In July 2006 the District Court of Colorado released its Memorandum Opinion and Order for the case Clean Flicks of Colorado, LLC v. Soderbergh. The decision stands as the culmination of events that included accusations, finger-pointing, judicial appeals, massive impleadings, academic debates, congressional hearings, and even statutory intervention. The specific issue that the court faced, which is still under discussion today, was whether companies that edit consumers' personal copies of motion pictures for moral content infringed the movie studios' copyrights. Although much of mainstream America was likely unaware of either the case’s existence or outcome, the court's decision has the potential to affect many Americans because it directly impacts the broader question at issue: whether a proper balancing of copyright interests should recognize and protect consumers' right to control the way that they experience movies in the privacy of their own homes.
The practice of editing movies beyond the version released in theaters is not new. For many years, movie studios, as copyright owners, have edited their movies for airline and television use. Furthermore, modern technology has given consumers the ability to control and edit their movie-viewing experiences. Devices such as VCRs, DVD players, and, most recently, TiVo allow consumers to time-shift, fast-forward, pause, and even skip materials within television shows and movies. If viewers wish to completely bypass commercials, boring love scenes, or intensely frightening sections recorded within a production, they can easily do so with a mere click of a button. Given such expectations of control, perhaps it was inevitable that concerned consumers would eventually attempt to remove movie content that they found morally objectionable. [MORE]
