Studios Sue to Stop Family-friendly DVD Film Cuts... Again.

A coalition of major studios including Paramount, Warner Bros., MGM, Disney, Universal and Fox has filed a lawsuit against a defendant who has taken DVD movies such as "Iron Man 2," "The Hurt Locker," "Prince of Persia" and "Date Night," altered them to be free of objectionable content, redistributing them to consumers as "family-friendly." The lawsuit was filed on Thursday in Arizona District Court against Family Edited DVDS, Inc. and its leader, John Webster.

The studios claim that the reproduction of the films violates their exclusive copyrights. Further, the plaintiffs allege that the defendant is selling its films in DVD-R format, which they say strips away copyright protection measures and makes them "highly vulnerable to further unauthorized copying and other forms of infringement."

The studios are requesting permanent injunctive relief.

Seven years ago, Hollywood battled DVD sanitizers including CleanFlicks, CleanFilms, Family Flix USA, and Play it Clean Video. In July, 2006, a federal judge ruled that santized DVDs were an infringement on the copyrights of the original films and ordered the businesses to turn over their inventory. At the time, the defendants pledged to appeal, but they never did. Back then, some lawmakers believed that households should have the ability to skip objectionable content in films. In 2005, the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act was passed into law, which allowed manufacturers of special products such as ClearPlay DVD players and their users an exemption from copyright liability for skipping the adult material. Few lawyers think the legislation allowed re-distribution of altered DVDs, however.

Family Edited DVDs couldn't be reached for comment. Judging by the appearance of their website, the company may have seen this lawsuit coming. It is currently advertising a "liquidation" sale, telling its customers to get edited DVDs while they still can.

While we don't advocate any kind of copyright infringement and are quick to jump on the anybody bucking the slow-moving, litigious masses of the studios, in this case they might be in the right. It's hard to see how re-cutting and redistributing movie content on DVD-R format is legal in any sense of the term, though in principle we like what's being offered, and wish that "family-friendly" was pushed as hard as the soon-to-be-doomed 3D Blu-ray format. In this particular case, it appears that someone was possibly attempting to make a quick buck and knew full well what they were going had already been ruled illegal in previous court cases. There are ways, to be sure, where we feel this should be legal - in a service format, for instance (which also was ruled illegal) but that's another story.