CleanFlicks was a company founded in Utah in 2000 that rented and sold commercially-released DVDs and VHS tapes from which they had edited content which the company considered inappropriate for children or that viewers might otherwise find offensive. CleanFlicks removed sexual content, profanity, some references to deity, and some violence from movies, either by muting audio or clipping entire portions of the track. A group of major film productions studios sued CleanFlicks in 2002, arguing that their service constituted copyright infringement. A 2006 court ruling closed the company. On March 13, 2007, CleanFlicks reopened its website with "Movies You Can Trust." While legally enjoined from offering edited movies, an email sent by the company on that date indicated that they had reviewed "tens of thousands" of movies and compiled over 1000 that meet their "family-friendly criteria" for sale and rent. In January 2013, the CleanFlicks.com website was no longer online.
An announcement of intention to sue on the Directors Guild of America website caused CleanFlicks to preemptively file a lawsuit in Denver Federal Court in August 2002. Robert Huntsman, an attorney and inventor affiliated with Cleanflicks who had a DVD-editing patent pending, was named as the lead plaintiff, so the original short caption for the case was Huntsman v. Soderbergh. In their suit, Cleanflicks sought a judgment stating that edited content was legal under federal copyright law. In addition to director Steven Soderbergh, named defendants included Hollywood luminaries such as Steven Spielberg, Robert Redford, Sydney Pollack, RobertAltman, John Landis, and Martin Scorsese. Although the chain had been operating for two years, the issue was brought to the spotlight when MovieMask made a series of demonstrations around Hollywood in March of that year. The directors' counter-suit soon followed, but the legal battle stretched on for years. On July 6, 2006, a federal judge in Denver ruled that CleanFlicks' editing violated U.S. copyright laws. The judge ordered the company to "stop producing, manufacturing, creating, and renting" edited movies, and to hand all inventory to movie studios within five days of the ruling. The court gave the company more time than the ruling's initial five-day deadline for turning over the stock of edited movies, since CleanFlicks needed more time to receive movies which were still out on rental. CleanFlicks had planned to appeal the ruling, but informed its customers by email on July 28, 2006: The decision not to appeal the ruling became primarily a financial one. Having won the initial court battle, the directors and studios were in a position to collect significant damages for copyright infringement from the editing companies. Although the companies would almost certainly receive a stay of judgment pending appeals, the risk was much higher now. Since the inventory of edited movies had no value to the studios, a deal was offered whereby the companies would be allowed to sell off all of their inventory and keep the profits if they agreed not to appeal the ruling and the studios would not pursue damage claims. Thus, the companies, and their investors, would collect further revenue and be protected from damages and the studios would have a significant court ruling stand and the legal precedent would be set. After discussions with their legal teams and investors, the decision was made to accept the offer. The companies were then given additional time to clear out their inventory but no more films could be edited during that time. All unsold inventory was then sent to the studios as defined by the ruling. CleanFlicks discontinued offering edited movies on August 31, 2006.
Relaunch
In March 2007, CleanFlicks announced by email to former customers that they were relaunching their rental services based on a new business model. Earlier in 2007, CleanFlicks had explored by email to, and online polling of, former customers the possibility of relaunching based on an unedited movie-rental business model. As a result, rather than renting content-edited DVDs, CleanFlicks now offers DVD releases of unedited modern and classic movies. CleanFlicks' inventory now contains "ONLY Movies You Can Trust". Movies rented from the company "will contain no nudity, no graphic violence, and no sexual content." Former customers' accounts have been retained in the CleanFlicks database, allowing those customers as well as the general public to resume their patronage of CleanFlicks using a "movies-out-at-a-time" tiered structure as before.
Related
Alternatively, a system called ClearPlay uses a customized DVD player with software running concurrently with the DVD playback to perform edits in real-time during the playback, instead of playing back pre-edited movies.
