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."

Someone on a library listserv sent a link to this slate story, about companies releasing bowdlerized versions of movies--the nekkid-Winslet-free Titanic, the I-missed-the-beginning Saving Private Ryan, etc. This story has been around for a while, but it's nice to see it receiving some mainstream attention.

That said, this author is a fool. He suggests that a censored version of a movie is less like a derivative work and more like excerpts taken for, say, a review. This is a ridiculous position. Reviews appear in The New York Review of Books, not on the shelves of video stores in Mormon country. He pooh-poohs the argument that someone might inadvertantly select a bowdlerized version. He notes that studios already release different versions of movies, oblivious to the fact that this is only somethimes that case, and the way that, for example, the TV version of 'Dune' was directed by Allan Smithee, and that, more generally, studios use creative control as a carrot with which to lure auteur directors. And, perhaps most egregiously, he completely ignores the idea of 'the effect of the use on the market for or value of the copyrighted work' (from this glossary) Much like that Suicide Girls article--if you don't know much about movies, and you don't know much about copyright law, what would possess you to write an article like this one?  ¶ 2:12 PM