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Everybody Wants to Direct: The Editing of Motion Pictures in Clean Flicks v. Soderbergh

By Jason D. Sanders

On July 6, 2006, in Clean Flicks of Colo., LLC v. Soderbergh, 433 F. Supp. 2d 1236 (D. Colo. 2006), the court granted summary judgment to several film studios, holding that the practice of making and distributing edited versions of the studios' motion pictures by the defendants, collectively known as the 'Clean Flicks defendants,' amounted to copyright infringement.

The Clean Flicks court relied heavily upon its conclusion that the defendants violated the plaintiffs' 'right to control the content of the copyrighted work,' which the court reasoned was 'the essence of the law of copyright.' 433 F. Supp. 2d at 1242. The court declined, however, to find that the edited movies were infringing derivative works. In analyzing the right of a copyright holder to prevent modifications to a work, the court presented two contrasting perspectives. While it concluded that there is a very narrow derivative work right, it asserted a broad right of a copyright holder to otherwise prevent modifications to a work.

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