CleanFlicks Plays Dirty with Artists’ Creative Rights

CleanFlicks, founded by Utah’s Ray Lines, is a DVD rental company that edits profanity, nudity, violence, etc. from movies and rents them out to people who find those things unbearably offensive. It is wonderful that people have the power to avoid things that they do not want to see, but the problem is that CleanFlicks is editing these movies without the consent of directors. This is akin to putting a fig leaf on a naked statue, clipping out words from a song, or blacking out text in a book.

Film is an artistic medium, and directors are artists. An artist creates a piece of art as a complete work. Every element in that piece of art is there because the artist put it there for a purpose. When companies delete things from art, they diminish the art and degrade the artist.

This is a free-market system where people are supposed to vote with their wallets. Whenever people rent or purchase a movie, edited or not, they are giving the director financial support. If people are offended by nudity, profanity, violence, etc., they should not financially support directors that put those elements in their movies.

If a lot of people start paying for only family friendly movies, the studios will take notice and shift their financial backing to more tame fare. Look at the movies from the 1940s. They have virtually no profanity, nudity, or violence. This is not because of prudish directors, but because the American movie-goers at that time demanded clean movies. Show business is a business, and the entertainment will eventually conform to market demands.

The issue here is not consumer freedom. Consumers should be able to see or not see whatever they want. The issue here is the rights and reputation of the artists. The artist is the creator of the work and accountable for its content. Therefore, the artists (and their financiers) are the only ones who have the right to authorize changes to their work.

Television networks edit movies all of the time, but they do it with the permission of the directors, studios, etc. Likewise, CleanFlicks should be allowed to edit whatever they want from movies, but they should have the decency to get the permission of the director before they do it.

Mel Gibson is currently suing CleanFlicks, because they edited out three minutes of material from The Passion of the Christ. Gibson’s case against CleanFlicks is bound to be a landmark decision for artists’ creative rights.

Most DVD-by-Mail Comparisons Are Flawed

Almost every week, some well-intentioned but clueless journalist releases the obligatory DVD-by-mail comparison story. The story is generally titled something like "Customers Win in War of Online DVD Rental Firms", “Who’s Winning the DVD War?”, "In the Competition for DVD Rentals by Mail, Two Empires Strike Back", “Netflix vs. Blockbuster”, etc.

The titles of the articles don’t matter, because the stories are all the same. The brilliantly original, hard-hitting investigative reporter always signs up with Blockbuster Online and Netflix and tracks the turnaround of DVDs for one month. The reporter then compares the numbers and draws conclusions about who is better. The results are almost always like this:

• Netflix has a better Web site
• Netflix processes DVDs a little faster
• Netflix carries NC-17 titles
• Blockbuster Online has more new releases
• Blockbuster Online processes DVDs on weekends
• Blockbuster Online provides free coupons for in-store rentals
  

The comparison stories always seem to wrap things up so cleanly and finally get to the bottom of the issue about who is better in the DVD-by-mail industry.

The problem, however, is that anyone who has tested Netflix and at least one other rental company knows the methodology used for most of these investigations is flawed. Anyone who has tried renting a lot of DVDs from Netflix for more than a few weeks in a row knows that Netflix begins applying throttling measures to limit the flow of DVDs after as little as one month of heavy use. Since Netflix throttles users, no comparison story is complete without explaining this concept.

The failure to address throttling is the major flaw in most of the comparison stories; however, the stories often have other major errors and glaring omissions that make the results useless. Please read these comparison stories with a critical eye, and keep in mind that no DVD-by-mail comparison story is complete unless it meets the following criteria:

1. The study covers a single time period lasting at least three continuous months.
2. The investigator took full advantage of each rental plan by returning DVDs as quickly as possible.
3. The investigator lives near distribution centers for all companies studied.
4. The investigator rents DVDs that are representative of the readers’ viewing habits. (For example, an investigation conducted for a mainstream newspaper should include a sample of DVDs that represents mainstream viewing tastes.)
5. The investigator details the fine points of each rental plan (e.g., throttling, plan limits, poor inventory quality, number of shipping days per week, etc.)
   

DVD-by-mail comparison stories have become a popular diversion for lazy journalists and provide the readers with misleading or useless information. As readers, we need to be demanding more. When you see these incomplete comparison stories, consider contacting the authors to let them know what they missed. Hopefully, journalists will start conducting some thorough investigations of these companies, and we can finally reach some real conclusions about where consumers can get the best value.

DVD-by-Mail Company Comparisons

Have you compared multiple DVD-by-mail companies? If so, please share your experiences.

24 Hour Video Store

If you want an easy way to search for independent video stores near your home, 24 Hour Video Store (www.24hourvideo.com) allows you to search their database of video stores using your ZIP code. The results will first list 24 Hour Video Store member stores followed by a list of video stores listed in order of proximity to the ZIP code you provide.

Video Rodeo Advertising Campaign

The people at Video Rodeo (www.videorodeo.net) in Gainesville, Florida are taking on the video giants with their advertising campaign. The ads are funny and contain a lot of truth. See some of the ads at www.videorodeo.net/adarchive.html.