when copyright is a good thing

In a rare victory for the good guys, a federal judge in Denver has ruled against an outfit called CleanFlicks, which sanitizes Hollywood films of “offensive” material through digital editing, makes DVDs, and resells them to people who like wholesome fare:

“Their [studios and directors] objective . . . is to stop the infringement because of its irreparable injury to the creative artistic expression in the copyrighted movies,” the judge wrote in a 16-page decision. “There is a public interest in providing such protection. Their business is illegitimate.”

Michael Apted, director of “Coal Miner’s Daughter” and president of the Director’s Guild of America, said Friday that movie directors can feel “vindicated” by the ruling.

“Audiences can now be assured that the films they buy or rent are the vision of the filmmakers who made them and not the arbitrary choices of a third-party editor,” he said in a statement to The Salt Lake Tribune.

In the conversation about the coming digital revolution in books, I argued that many authors will want to keep their books whole—not to cling to copyright for its own sake but rather because sometimes it is the integrity of the work that makes a particular book exceptional: it is of a piece, and every word is essential to making it what it is, so altering it takes something away from the work. Books like that exist. Let’s say, for the sake of the argument, J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye and E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime. Others will have their own examples.

So too with films. Whether you’re colorizing them to get eyeballs not used to black-and-white or chopping them up to make them Palatable for the Pious, you’re destroying their integrity.

It’s a valid argument, and an argument we need to be clear on—and one we will need to stand up for—as the digital revolution continues apace and the Moral Marauders start to take advantage of it