Clean Flicks makes a broader point, too: They say they just want to show their families movies free from offensive content and claim that studios secretly support them even if the directors don't. In fact, it is possible that the studios were headed in that direction anyway. As consumers have flocked to the DVD format, studios have loaded on extra features like directors' interviews, wide-screen versions, and even (in Moulin Rouge) alternate camera angles. Just as they offer versions edited for airline flights or TV broadcast, the studios could easily recut many R-rated films as PG-13 or PG and even release them on the same disc. The recording industry already sells edited songs with sexually explicit lyrics side-by-side with the unexpurgated versions. But in Hollywood, directors have so much power - and see themselves largely as European auteurs - that they resist multiple versions of their work even when the studios think it could make them more money. In the end, directors may just be hurting themselves. As the best-selling author and screenwriter Michael Crichton has said, "The smart move is to release the bowdlerized versions yourself and make the money. The dumb move is to fight it."

....The current lawsuit is a harbinger of exactly what could be precluded if "moral rights" continue to grow on U.S. soil: Much less freedom to play with our cultural heritage. Viewed in a different light, a victory for either Clean Flicks or Trilogy and Clear Play could unleash considerable creativity. Take the "Phantom Edit," an anonymous alteration of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace that cut 20 minutes from the film by deleting scenes with the universally annoying Jar Jar Binks. Traded widely on computer file-sharing services, the bowdlerized film would clearly run afoul of the current copyright law's bar on preparing "derivative works." And what a tragedy that would be. What about a software "mask" that instructs DVD players to simply skip over Jar Jar? Sounds pretty attractive, huh? Great things can be born from such small ideas. I have to go along with the "censors" on this one.