Full article can be found here.

I suppose we were due for our next one. Daniel Thompson, purveyor of “clean” (read: edited) videos and DVDs, has been arrested for pederasty. You may remember Thompson as a franchisee of the now-defunct Clean Flicks, the most prominent of these “family values” video editing services… if only because the Directors Guild of America brought a successful lawsuit against them for copyright violation. And rightfully so; cutting up someone else’s work and then reselling it is pretty much the definition of copyright violation.

Which doesn’t even get into the artistic integrity of the thing. You may have noticed I’m kind of a snob about these things, but it’s my belief that if you’re not willing to accept the director’s whole vision (or at least as much of it as made it onto the screen), you don’t have the right to any of it. Because movies require so much planning to film and are so very taxing when it comes to time, money, and other resources, every single shot must count for something. Even if it’s an esoteric one, there is a reason for everything you see on the screen, from the buttons on one guy’s jacket to the lighting to the dialog choices… and yes, to whether or not there will be nudity. These are all artistic decisions, even if the “art” in question is meant, specifically, to be gratuitous. You, Mr. Utah Guy With an Editing Suite, do not get to call those shots for Mssrs. Spielberg, Cameron, Kubrick, et al.

I won’t belabor the point about the most vocally moral people having the most to hide. There’s simply nothing to say that the article itself doesn’t.

(Credit Leah for finding it.)