Did you know there’s a streaming service that lets you and your family censor sex, violence and expletives from your favorite films and TV shows before watching?
VidAngel is a dream service for individuals and families who want to enjoy entertainment without being forced to listen to or view smut and other negative content.
Here’s how it works: The technology essentially allows users to choose which content they want to skip over based on categories, essentially creating family friendly versions of their favorite feature films and TV shows.
While VidAngel has grown in popularity since its launch last year, the company faces a massive lawsuit from Disney, Lucasfilm, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. and Warner Bros. Entertainment; those companies allege that VidAngel is “an unauthorized streaming service.”
You can read more about that lawsuit here. Faithwire spoke with VidAngel founder Neal Harmon to find out more about the company and what it’s all about:
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FAITHWIRE: What is VidAngel?
NEAL HARMON: VidAngel is a filtering service empowering parents to watch popular Hollywood movies while removing sex, violence, nudity, and other elements they don’t want to see. It creates a highly customized experience that suits the specific needs of each family.
FAITHWIRE: What led you to create the technology?
NEAL HARMON: My brothers and I are all dads with young kids. We first made VidAngel for our families.
FAITHWIRE: How does the technology work?
HARMON: We don’t edit the movies; you do. They’re tagged by people all over the country who look for potentially objectionable items, creating literally hundreds of possible filtering options. Then users choose what they prefer to remove. To boot, VidAngel works on nearly all modern devices!
FAITHWIRE: How robust is the market for this sort of thing?
HARMON: According to a National Research Group, at least 56 million Americans.
FAITHWIRE: Why do you believe it is important for families to have this sort of technology?
HARMON: There are so many movies with great stories and powerful messages that parents have to take off the table because the positive elements are overshadowed by a few negative elements that many believe are harmful to kids.
FAITHWIRE: What sort of feedback have you received?
HARMON: The feedback has been astonishing. We are one of the fastest growing companies of our type in history.
FAITHWIRE: What message do you want to send Hollywood about the content of its films and shows?
HARMON: Hollywood should be able to make whatever it wants, and we should have the right to watch it the way we want in the privacy of our home.
FAITHWIRE: You are currently being sued by Disney among other companies. In your view, why are they challenging you?
HARMON: They are trying to win in court what they lost in Congress. The Family Movie Act, a law Congress passed in 2005 that makes VidAngel possible, was originally passed, against the studios’ wishes, because the studios had sued every single filtering company in existence (12 companies) and refused to give their permission to filter their content. Upset that the studios refused a business solution, Congress passed the FMA to create a compromise that balanced the interests of the studios, directors, American families and companies like VidAngel.
The FMA required that three conditions be met in order for VidAngel to stream a filtered movie: 1) an authorized copy of the movie, 2) a private in-home viewing of the filtered movie, and 3) no fixed copy of the altered version of the movie. The studios’ interpretation of the FMA in this lawsuit would render the FMA useless in the streaming age because the studios have always refused to license their content for filtering.
FAITHWIRE: What happens to VidAngel if you lose that case?
HARMON: We are in the preliminary injunction phase of the case. If we lose that, we may have to cease part or all of our operations until the legal issues are settled. Whether we win or lose the first round, we are going to take this case all the way to the Supreme Court.
FAITHWIRE: You raised $10 million in just five days. What was the purpose of that fundraiser — and were you shocked by the response?
HARMON: Two weeks before the studios sued us, we asked about 1/4 of our customers if they wanted to invest. They said yes, to the tune of $62 million dollars. With the cloud of the lawsuit hanging over our heads, we decided to ask our customers for $5 million so we could be sure to take the lawsuit all the way to the Supreme Court. We warned them only invest what they can afford to loose because we could be shut down. Then customers invested twice what we asked for, which deepened our resolve to fight this battle on behalf of American families.
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Find out more about VidAngel here.
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