Clean Flicks Rents Movies Free of Offensive Content - But is it Legal? Want to rent a movie without all the sex and violence? Tired of watching The Sound of Music for the 30th time? A company called Clean Flicks has opened stores across the nation, where viewers can rent movies with the bad language, sex and other "offensive content" neatly edited out. But not everyone is thrilled with the idea - particularly the movie directors and producers, who see a clear case of copyright violation. Film makers say that Clean Flicks has no right to change their movies. Ironically, in a legal "preemptive strike" Clean Flicks has sued the film makers, before the film makers sue them. Clean Flicks is seeking a declaratory judgment from the court, essentially asking that the court give its blessing to the practice of editing and renting the movies. Not all the editing is smooth. There are places in the Clean Flicks movies where the audio track simply goes silent, although this may protect the ears of viewers, good lip readers will not be fooled. While there are many who would agree that movies would be just as good without the bad language, the larger question is: can a company legally alter the artistic work product of another, then sell or rent the altered product under the same name? Movies shown on airlines and television are edited to clean them up, but the editing is done by the film makers for such special viewings. By comparison, Clean Flicks edits films without the guidance or permission of the film makers. When Clean Flicks takes a film, changes it and rents it out, it's almost like taking a book, tearing out certain pages which may be offensive, and selling or renting it as if it were the original work of art. These films are being rented or sold, having been labeled as being created by a particular director, yet they have been altered by someone without the director's permission. It is essentially false advertising - a mislabeling of the source of the film. Clean Flicks claims to have the Fair Use Doctrine on it's side. Fair Use allows one to use a limited amount of copyrighted work, typically for personal use at home, such as when a consumer videotapes a show at home, and watches it when time allows. But the concept of Fair Use will be stretched to a new limit, if it allows a company to make a new version of the film and profit from the new version in a commercial setting. One thing is for sure, as the digital medium continues to be an integral part of the Hollywood landscape, we can only expect more of these types of cases to arise in the future.

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