Anime News

Spirited Away DVD Lawsuit Settled
Date: 9/13/2004
Disney Agrees to Apologize for DVD and agrees to inform the public over future DVD changes.


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Yahoo News that the lawsuit over the colors on the Japanese Spirited Away DVD release has been settled.

Walt Disney has agreed to "express regret" to people who bought the DVD, and to inform the public whenever it makes changes to films in the future (this applies to all Disney DVD releases in Japan, not merely Spirited Away). In addition, Disney has agreed to replace the plaintiff's DVDs and give them each 10,000 yen (US$90).

The three plaintiffs launched the lawsuit in December 2002 over frustration with Disney's July 2002 Japanese DVD release of Spirited Away. Disney and Ghibli insisted that the addition of a red tint to the DVDs video was done on purpose in order to improve the quality of the video on plasma screens with a 9300k color temperature. Many people however believed that the tint was actually a production error.

The requirement that Disney inform the public of changes made to future DVDs would make it difficult for the company to claim to have purposefully adjusted video in order to cover up production errors.
Source: Anime News Network