In Slate, Drew Clark takes a position contrary to intuition regarding the "clean" film debate:

Cutting sex, violence, and profanity from movies is normally considered censorship. But if studios and directors like Steven Spielberg and Steven Soderbergh win a copyright suit against 11 small companies that permit consumers to avoid such scenes, free speech will be the loser, not the victor.

Most of the companies are based in Utah and offer families "clean" versions of popular films. Since they each use different methods for bypassing potentially offensive portions, the directors' and studios' claims against some are more legally compelling than others. Clean Flicks, for example, makes a master copy of Saving Private Ryan, editing out the bullet shots in the movie's first battle scene. It then duplicates the revised version for rental or purchase by the "members" of its franchises. Another company, ClearPlay, creates a software filter or mask that is downloaded to a special DVD player. Once a consumer pops an unaltered Erin Brockovich DVD in the player, the software simply instructs the player to mute Julia Roberts' foul language. Trilogy Studios of Salt Lake City takes this process one step further: Instead of skipping over the nude Kate Winslet posing for Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic, its latest software tells the DVD player to display a picture of her body clothed with a corset.

....The tensions between moral rights and free speech can't be avoided in the Clean Flicks lawsuit, where rival worldviews - copyright for "authors" versus copyright for "readers" - butt heads. Although the studios and directors charge all 11 companies with copyright and trademark infringement, the editing and filtering companies make different arguments in their defense. The Clean Flicks folks say they respect those copyrights by only making a single edited copy for each original video or DVD they purchase. Moreover, certain acts of copying can be excused under the "fair use" doctrine, which permits individuals and companies to make limited uses or noncommercial copies of others' copyrighted works. But recent court decisions have limited businesses' ability to claim "fair use" as a defense. In other words, it may be legal for a consumer to cut offensive scenes out of her own videotape, but illegal for a company to do it for her--even though Clean Flicks claims that it is merely offering a service for its "members."

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