Disney does some great movies, right? And Warner Brothers, Lucasfilm and Twentieth Century Fox.
A lot of the great flicks in recent years have come with those names attached.
So why are those companies requiring that consumers watch nudity, if filmmakers decide to include it in a film? Or hear profanity? Or see violence?
That’s the question that will be raised in a case against a company called VidAngel.com, which filters movies for consumers according to their wishes.
The company recently announced the addition of legendary Hollywood intellectual property attorney David W. Quinto to its legal team.
“Mr. Quinto’s first task will be to spearhead its defense of a lawsuit brought by four major Hollywood studios hoping to enjoin VidAngel from offering its filtering service to the public,” the company confirmed just days ago.
“David’s decision to join VidAngel as general counsel represents the single most significant development in the case to date. Having successfully represented iconic Hollywood institutions such as the Oscar, the Academy Awards and the Producers Guild of America, as well clients dealing with cutting edge Internet legal issues, there is no one better suited to oversee our legal strategy,” said Neal Harmon, CEO of VidAngel.
“David wrote the original legal opinion upon which VidAngel’s business model is based, and today’s announcement demonstrates his full confidence that values consumers seeking to filter content will prevail in court,” Harmon said.
“It is a privilege to be asked by VidAngel to focus on winning a landmark copyright case sure to make new law. I am confident that the studios have overreached by trying to enjoin a service expressly authorized by Congress for the protection of children, and I look forward to the opportunity to demonstrate that in court,” Quinto said.
At issue is the process set up by Vidangel under the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005 that enables families to watch movies that have been filtered by a third party, removing nudity, vulgar language and other material deemed offensive.
In an interview with Diane Howard, which was made available to WND, Quint explained that the law protects artists by increasing penalties for copyright infringement, but it also allows the use of technology to filter potentially offensive content, to protect families.
But VidAngel’s process of filtering movies has prompted the film companies to sue, which in turn has led to antitrust action by VidAngel against the studios.
The complaint against the studios charges they “have interfered with VidAngel’s attempts to partner with streaming content providers to filter movies.”
“Plaintiffs have also sought to improperly expand their copyright monopoly, seeking to deprive consumers of their right to buy and sell copyright works.”
VidAngel buys a legal copy of each movie title and matches it to each user, providing the legal DVD owner with a version that has had objectionable portions excised.
The studios went to court to claim that the VidAngel process violated their movie ownership rights.
“The [studios] claim that this is not about their desire to stop yet another filtering company, rather it’s about our process for buying, preparing and transmitting filtered content. This case is fundamentally about filtering, and as that becomes clear in the legal process, we are confident that the courts will uphold the law of the land,” said Harmon. “We hope that the filing will help these studios to realize that they are asking the court to shut down a service that will allow millions to filter content for themselves and their children.”
In the interview with Howard, Quinto explained the law provides “protection for consumers such as by leaving the filter specification to the discretion of families while permitting private viewing.”
The law, he said, allows a third party to stream filtered movies – but not make fixed or bootleg copies – and that’s what the company is doing.
“Consumers lawfully purchase a DVD or Blu-Ray and then choose what they want filtered. VidAngel streams the content to them precisely as they have requested,” he said.
He said it’s common sense that such features allow consumers to buy movies they otherwise would not.
If the studios get their way, the Family Home Movie Act would be meaningless, he said.
The company has posted a video online to show the impact of the objectionable material in movies, some of which contain hundreds of incidents of foul language, nudity and violence.
The paintballs represent the offensive material in a movie and how much that has changed since Clark Gable’s first swear word on film in 1939:
if(typeof(jQuery)==”function”){(function($){$.fn.fitVids=function(){}})(jQuery)};
jwplayer(‘jwplayer_kEucjd1W_pszPfxYQ_div’).setup(
{“playlist”:”http://ift.tt/2b0RR8E”}
);
VidAngel has earned a No. 1 BestCompany.com user rating.
from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2016/08/12/vidangel-fights-disney-demand-consumers-watch-nudity/
from WordPress https://toddmsiebert.wordpress.com/2016/08/11/vidangel-fights-disney-demand-consumers-watch-nudity/
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