BYU senior Mara Fulbright was still chuckling at Woody Allen's humorous lines as the credits of "Scoop" rolled across the TV screen. She had no idea the movie's dialogue was actually laced with profanity and sexual references. The Clearplay DVD player had omitted it all during playback.

Amid the controversy that has enveloped the sale of edited movies in recent months, Salt Lake-based Clearplay, which filters objectionable content on DVDs, continues to broaden its reach.

Clearplay's DVD players are currently available at the BYU Bookstore, Seagull Book and the company's Web site for $80 to $100. By the end of the month, they will also be sold in Target stores nationwide, said Matt Jarman, Clearplay's inventor and chief technical officer.

"We really want to position ourselves as the company for parental control of movies," he said.

Owners of Clearplay DVD players download individual movie filters onto a USB drive for a monthly membership fee of $7.95. When inserted into a USB port in the DVD player, these filters mask objectionable content in the movies during playback without physically altering the DVDs.

Jarman thought of the idea in the late 1990s and formed the company in 2000. He started by experimenting with software and then moved on to DVD players.

"It was a pretty long road, and a lot of people have been involved," he said.

The fate of the company was uncertain when it was thrust into a 2002 lawsuit between the Director's Guild of America and edited movie companies such as Cleanflicks.

The other companies stopped selling editing movies last summer because of the court decision condemning them as copyright infringement. But Clearplay was dropped from the lawsuit by the judge in accordance with the Family Movie Act, signed into law by President George W. Bush in April 2005. The act clarified the U.S. copyright code, stating that portions of a movie may be made "imperceptible" during a private home viewing provided "no fixed copy of the altered version of the motion picture is created."

After the act was passed, Clearplay quickly began to expand its horizons. CEO Bill Aho said the company will soon move into the video-on-demand market and is laying the groundwork for expansion into Europe.

"It is not a niche product," he said, pointing out that studies have shown half the U.S. population would be interested in content-blocked video on demand. However, Aho does not sympathize with distributors that have again started to edit DVDs.

"Those guys that edit movies clearly create what copyright laws consider a derivative work," Aho said. "We never make a copy of anything. All we do is allow you to skip or mute sections of the DVD."

Aho said he sees it as ironic that people who don't want offensive content in their movies buy them from people who are breaking the law.

Daniel Thompson, owner of edited DVD retailer Flix Club in Orem, spoke favorably of Clearplay.

"I think it offers people an option," he said. But Thompson said edited movies provide a much more seamless experience for the viewer.

Thompson's Cleanflicks stores closed last September because of the court ruling. He opened Flix Club two months ago after he learned copyright law allows editing for educational purposes.

Thompson said working through the educational loophole is only temporary, and his distributor is negotiating with the Director's Guild of America to secure a permanent solution. He expects that official versions of films edited for airlines and television will be available for sale by Christmas.

"I think that's the best resolution we can come up with," he said. "It's win-win for both of us. I think it's going to work out really well."

Aaron Johnston, a BYU graduate and Nauvoo.com columnist, was a Cleanflicks customer before it closed, but now he prefers Clearplay.

"Cleanflicks didn't allow you to choose the content you found objectionable," he said, explaining that he can tolerate some violence but not nudity. "One of the great things about Clearplay is it gives you the flexibility to choose your own settings. You can select the parameters to reflect your own preference."

Johnston said the Clearplay system is far from perfect. The process of uploading filters is tedious, and the set-up is not Mac-friendly, he said. Johnston hopes the company will continue to improve its software, but he still recommends it.

"Overall, I think it's a wonderful product," he said. "I think it's really smart technology. It works really seamlessly. Typically, you can't tell where the edits are made."

Johnston, who currently resides near Greenville, S. C., said demand for clean movies is not just limited to Utah.

"People here are church-going," he said. "They're people with values. I tell a lot of people at work about Clearplay, and they're very interested."

Mara Fulbright, a theater education major from Stevensville, Mont., said it is important for movies to be both wholesome and entertaining. She has watched edited movies from Cleanflicks and movies played on a Clearplay DVD player.

"Cleanflicks was kind of choppy, and they would take out a whole scene for one little thing that was inappropriate," she said. "Clearplay is more seamless. You don't have to see anything inappropriate, but you also don't have to miss anything important."

Copyright Brigham Young University 17 Apr 2007