

Film-censoring software angers entertainment industry LOS ANGELES (AP)  Last June, Utah software developer Breck Rice met with movie directors to pitch a new program that could insert product placements into movies, make a New York skyline resemble Tokyo, and even drape a modest negligee over Kate Winslet during her nude scene in Titanic. The program, called "MovieMask," was designed to digitally alter films in large part to make them more family friendly, skipping violent or sexual content and toning down language. CleanFlicks CEO Ray Lines, left, and president John Dixon with some of their 'sanitized' films. By Douglas C. Pizac, AP/file To demonstrate, Rice showed the directors a demo tape. The swords in a fight in Rob Reiner's The Princess Bride were changed to light sabers. Jack Nicholson's lips in A Few Good Men were altered and a voiceover added to change a rant using an offensive term to "you funny people." The directors were furious. "It was heated. The directors did feel threatened," said Warren Adler, associate national director of the Directors Guild of America, who attended the meeting. That meeting solidified the battle lines between Hollywood and a growing business dedicated to sanitizing films and television programs. On one side are a chain of video rental stores and a number of software programs and devices serving an audience that has grown tired of gratuitous sex and violence and foul language peppering films aimed at teenagers. "In the privacy of your own home, consumers have whatever liberties they want to take with property they own or have paid for the rights to use," Rice said. "No studio or no director should be allowed to tell parents how to protect their kids." Film studios and directors say they are sensitive to those concerns, but say the issue is about violating copyright and protecting the director's right to say "cut." "What this is about is the fact that the filmmaker and the copyright owner have the right to send their product out into the world and decide what they're saying and what they're presenting," Adler said. The debate has erupted into a flurry of legal actions. In August, the owner of a "CleanFlicks" video store in Colorado that rents sanitized video tapes and DVDs fired the first shot, suing the Directors Guild of America after word circulated that the DGA was planning its own suit. The suit asks a federal judge to find that the editing practices are protected under federal copyright law. Last September, the Directors Guild filed a countersuit against video stores that carry the edited films as well as software companies that do the editing. The suit named additional defendants, including Trilogy Studios, makers of MovieMask, ClearPlay and others. In December, eight Hollywood studios joined the lawsuit, alleging that the companies violate trademark law when they rent or sell an altered movie in the original packaging. CleanFlicks uses a proprietary system to identify what it considers objectionable material, including the use of God's name in vain, and alters the physical videotape or DVD before it's rented or sold. Among the films CleanFlicks has cleaned up is Good Will Hunting. The company says 130 F-words and 75 other curse words were muted in the 1997 film starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. CleanFlicks declined to edit the estimated 400 F-words from the 1990 Martin Scorsese movie Goodfellas. "It would have been a silent movie," CleanFlicks Chief Executive Ray Lines said. Other firms market software that acts like a remote control, muting foul language and fast forwarding past objectionable parts. Technicians at MovieMask, for example, scan films frame by frame, then create templates, or "masks," that skip certain frames depending on the viewer's choice. "Maybe a person doesn't want to see severed limbs or heads being blown up, but they are OK with blood," Rice said. "If a viewer sets it up not to show blood, then blood won't splatter when someone is getting shot or stabbed, but it can still show blood after the fact." Matt Green, a 29-year-old medical student in New York City, said his family won't watch R-rated films and uses ClearPlay to filter movies he watches on his computer. "We don't want our daughter to hear the language or see the violence," he said. Green, a Mormon, recently watched The Matrix using ClearPlay. "From what I hear, I definitely missed a couple of fight scenes," he said. "But I don't feel like we missed any of the plot." Officials with companies that use devices only to mute or skip without altering the underlying product said directors and studios are hypocritical for objecting to their services because the practice has been widespread within the industry for years. "I believe the directors themselves believe they are above everyone else and they have made a perfect product, when in fact the studios are doing it already for the airline and television versions," said Rice, the Utah software developer. Writers and directors admit they do edit their work for wider viewing but say directors often are consulted on those edits or actually shoot alternative footage for those versions. "In that case, the copyright holder does it by choice," said Victoria Riskin, president of the Writers Guild of America West. "Each scene, each moment has been carefully worked on. And just as the writer of a novel spends countless hours going over each sentence to be sure the story builds, the same principle should be upheld, protecting the artist's intention and vision." Moviemakers also are worried that the same technology that is being used today to delete foul language or clothe naked actors could be used tomorrow to spice up G-rated fare. "It's a double-edged sword," said Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, which represents the major film studios. "If there are people who want to do it for benign reasons, that's one thing. But they can take Spider-Man and make it into a pornographic movie, and that's a problem." Critics of Hollywood say the studios can end the debate by simply including the television or airline version of films on DVDs, thus giving viewers more choice. Valenti said the studios are considering such a move. The debate comes down to the power of technology that gives consumers choice versus the right of copyright holders to the products they sell. A hearing on the CleanFlicks case is scheduled for Feb. 14 in U.S. District Court in Denver. "This is a matter of economics and control. Who are they to dictate what my choices are?" said Bill Aho, chief executive of ClearPlay, a Utah company that provides software to mute and skip movies. Director Brad Silberling, a defendant in the CleanFlicks lawsuit, said the edit of his 1998 movie City of Angels compromised the storytelling by skipping key scenes that explained the motivation of the characters. He backs the idea of including edited versions on DVDs, but said viewers already have ultimate control over what they see because they can choose to avoid movies they find objectionable. "I think the message is loud and clear that there is a hunger and desire for content that can play across the age spectrum," Silberling said. "The danger is to assume we can make every film family appropriate. You can't take everyone to see Saving Private Ryan. But when someone is old enough, it's a powerful message." Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.