PROVO — Ben Kartchner rifled through three large tubs of movies labeled "Edited" at Cougar Video Friday evening, picking over what was left of the store's "clean" collection.

"The Island," "House of Wax," "Date Movie," "Tristan and Isolde," "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" — the tubs were stuffed with current blockbusters and classics, all edited squeaky clean and free of profanity, sex and violence.

Kartchner comes here frequently with his wife to rent edited flicks, which they feel align better with their values. In fact, cleaned-up videos are almost all they watch now.

They'll soon have to figure out a new strategy for finding movies scoured of unwanted scenes, however.

After a federal judge ruled last week that the sanitization of films violates federal copyright law, nearly all video stores in Utah that offer a selection of edited movies have pulled their collections off the shelves.

Some stores have announced they'll soon close for good.

Hollywood producers "are going to lose a lot of people who don't want to watch rated-R movies," said Veronica Kartchner, Ben's wife. "If you can take the bad stuff out, you should. I guess we'll just have to not watch movies any more, which is sad, because there are a lot of good movies out there."

The ruling, handed down by U.S. District Judge Richard P. Matsch, ended a three-year court battle between companies that edit DVD and VHS tapes for content and 16 prominent directors and entertainment studios.

Matsch wrote that leaving out objectionable scenes causes "irreparable injury to the creative artistic expression in the copyrighted movies."

The ruling came as a death sentence to a few privately owned, Utah-based video rental stores that cater specifically to customers looking for unsullied entertainment.

Four Clean Flicks stores around Utah County, all owned by Daniel Thompson, will be closing their doors for good Sept. 1.

Without movie-editing companies such as CleanFlicks Media Inc., CleanFilms and Family Flix USA, all of which were involved in the lawsuit, the rental store simply will not have the resources to remain open.

"Basically, we're done," said Mandy Botts, manager of three Clean Flicks movie rental stores in Orem and Provo. "It's something that was bound to happen, but even after three years it seems like it came out of nowhere. They edit films for TV all the time, and they edit songs on the radio, even if the artist might not like it, as a service to the public. I never thought it was that big of a deal, but apparently it's a bigger deal than I thought."

Botts said the news has come as a shock for all her customers.

Since the ruling July 6, the Clean Flicks stores have been selling off their remaining movies and getting ready to close shop.