John Dixon owes his career to Kate Winslet's brief topless scene in the film Titanic. If it hadn't scandalised the Mormon community of American Fork in Utah, it might never have occurred to the owners of a video retail store there to edit it out before putting the tape on their shelves.

They sold 10,000 copies of the sanitised version, inspiring Mr Dixon to found CleanFlicks, a national chain which rents out Hollywood's latest output minus what the firm calls "unpleasant surprises": sex, nudity, violence and profanities including "damn" and "oh, my God."

Not everyone is pleased, though. And among the objectors are Robert Altman, Michael Apted, Robert Redford, Steven Soderbergh, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg - directors who are in a legal dispute with CleanFlicks, accusing them of breaching copyright by putting out "grossly altered products" under their original titles.

The Directors' Guild of America names the directors among plaintiffs in a lawsuit it has filed in response to a pre-emptive request by a Colorado franchise of CleanFlicks, asking a judge to rule that their activities are legal. "It is unconscionable, and unethical, to take someone else's hard work, alter it and profit from it," Steven Soderbergh said. "Would anyone even attempt to defend ripping pages out of a book, leaving the author's name on it and then selling it?"

Other cleaned-up movies include Top Gun without its silhouetted love scene, a softer Die Hard, and a version of Saving Private Ryan in which the battlefields of the second world war hardly seem a particularly traumatising place.

Right or wrong, there is certainly a demand for the tapes: CleanFlicks has expanded well beyond Utah; in its lawsuit, the directors' guild names another 12 companies.

Mr Dixon told the New York Post: "If you own the tape, you're allowed to do whatever you want with the tape." His firm announced yesterday that it did not support the lawsuit, which it said was solely the initiative of a franchisee.