Another consideration about CleanFilms

[Mark Williams <markwilliams@MAKAW.NET>]

CleanFilms, Inc. states on their web site that they are a "cooperative
rental club", and that you must join the club to rent movies.  They claim
that they maintain a 1:1 ratio of purchased videos to their editied copies.
Since you must join the club, if one of the studios or directors decided to
take CleanFilms to court over all this, it well could be that all members
could be made part of the suit.  Just a thought.

I'm no lawyer, but it strikes me in reading through their site that all of
the text concerning the legality of their editing movies deals with their
*rental* copies.  But they also offer edited movies for *sale*; the fact
that they are buying a dvd, editing it and selling the edited copy to you
only (then buying another copy, editing it, and selling that editid copy to
another person, etc.) does not seem to me to avoid copyright issues.

They state that their 'service' is just like your using the fast forward or
mute buttons on your remote control.  The central difference here is that
you are NOT doing this for yourself in your home on the fly, but paying a
third party to make a permanent alteration in the copyrighted item.

My thirty-five cents worth (well, the rates have gone up! <G> )

Mark Williams
Consulting Librarian
Professional Services for Conferences, Districts, Workshops
markwilliams@makaw.net
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