Nick Gillespie has a great article at Reason on the Clean Flicks decision. His conclusion is right on:
I have no problem with gratuitous nudity (is there any other kind in a movie?), foul language, and graphic violence; but I’m squarely on the side of the easily offended CleanFlicks’ customers. They are doing precisely what technology is there for: to create the sort of art, music, video, and text that an individual or group of individuals wants to consume.
By all accounts, the CleanFlicks-type outfits weren’t ripping off Hollywood in any way, shape, or form–they were paying full fees for content–and they weren’t fooling anyone into thinking their versions were the originals; the whole selling point of CleanFlicks’ Titanic is that it spared audiences the original movie’s brief moment of full-frontal Winslet. CleanFlicks was simply part of a great and liberatory trend in which audiences are empowered to consume culture on their own terms–not the producers’. Big content providers may have prevailed in this specific case, but the sooner they understand and adapt to a much larger and more powerful cultural dynamic, the better they’ll be at serving the audiences who are increasingly in control of what they watch, listen to, and read.
Hollywood sure seems to be shooting itself in the foot with this decision. Instead of litigating Clean Flicks out of existence, they ought to have negotiated a licensing agreement with them. Not only would that mean more revenue for Hollywood and fewer boobs on the TV screens of conservative viewers, but it would also give conservatives one less reason to lobby for censorship.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
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