Partial victory for the Scared Sixteen

A while back, I wrote about a group of sixteen extremely insecure film directors who were getting all trembly at the idea that someone might make available alternate versions of their movies. Example: The "Phantom Edit" that stripped Jar Jar Binks out of a crappy movie, transforming it into a mediocre movie.

Instead of a top-down culture in which you take whatever The Creators deign to shove down your throat and you will like it, bitch, a growing number of movie fans actually believes that culture is a conversation. A conversation in which one can say, "Yeah, but what if it were like this instead?"

Cue a steady stream of urine running down the legs of the Scared Sixteen, who believe their careers depend on the helplessness of their audience.

Nobody on the free-culture side of this issue has ever threatened these filmmakers' right to release their movies as they see fit. But that doesn't matter to the filmmakers. The Scared Sixteen believe that allowing audiences to see other versions in addition to theirs, even if these versions are clearly labeled and fully compensate the original copyright holder, somehow causes them harm. Their point of view positions these filmmakers as gods -- beings whose vision is so pure that expressing a competing vision is literally a crime.

This DGA theocracy now has a U.S. District Court endorsement:

In a ruling in the case involving CleanFlicks vs. 16 of Hollywood's hottest directors, U.S. District Judge Richard P. Matsch found that making copies of movies to delete objectionable language, sex and violence hurts studios and directors who own the movie rights.

The ayatollahs are pleased:

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.

The sly misrepresentation in this prepared statement illustrates a key flaw in the argument of the Scared Sixteen. Apted implies that without this ruling consumers would be subject to falsely identified goods. But the plaintiffs have never proposed that altered works not be properly identified. And no DVD company involved, to my knowledge, has ever been accused of that kind of fraud. (The alterations are, in fact, the key attribute they're advertising.)

In his creepy statement, Apted is actually reassuring us that we won't have choices. That if we wanted something else, we can be assured now that it won't be available to us. Thanks for keeping my thoughts pure, Dear Leader.

There is one bright spot remaining:

The ruling does not affect another Utah company, ClearPlay, which has developed technology in DVD players that edits movies on the fly as they play.

As I've previously written, ClearPlay is the coolest audience-empowering gizmo I've ever heard of. It's a technology that, if put into the hands of the fans and made easy to use, could generate massive numbers of new and complex conversations about movies. These conversations, also known as "word of mouth," would increase the number of DVDs sold, because an actual DVD of the movie in question is required to participate in a ClearPlay conversation.

Naturally, Hollywood is opposed.