Don’t use your digital camera in a theater to record 20 seconds of the movie Transformers (even if it’s just to show your little brother) or you could face 1 year in jail and a $2,500 fine.
From the AP:
Sejas said the theater’s assistant manager saw her holding up the digital camera and reported it to the general manager, who called police.
The Marymount University sophomore was charged with a misdemeanor and was banned for life from the Regal Cinemas Ballston Common movie theaters.
“I was terrified,” Sejas said. “I was crying. I’ve never been in trouble before.”
Arlington County police spokesman John Lisle said the theater wanted to prosecute the case, which is a first for the police department.
“They were the victim in this case, and they felt strongly enough about it,” Lisle said.
Well, that seems fair. According to the article “copying a movie from a theater is a felony under the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005,” though the teen has only been charged with a misdemeanor.
Teen Faces Charges For Recording 20-Second Movie Clip [NBC4] (Thanks, Ian!)
(Photo:Wikipedia)
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@Mr. Gunn: True, she did steal, but she stole the equivalent of a candy bar from a superstore. It’s a slap on the wrist offense.
She’s a first time offender, odds are she’ll get a stern, “don’t do it again” and that’ll be the end of that.
Doesn’t the excuse of ‘I recorded it for my brother’ hold about as much water as saying to a cop ‘I swear officer, it’s not my weed’ when he pulls you over?
@Peeved Guy: If she were a geek, sure, she should know that this is something the movie industry has been taking very seriously. Your average individual on the street doesn’t necessarily follow these goings-on with quite as much interest.
My impression is that she’s a recent immigrant, not in a tech field, working her way up. I wouldn’t expect her (or any other random non-geeky person who borrowed a camcorder for their birthday) to be current on the status of the MPAA-vs-the-world battle.
The judge will be doing a grave injustice to all involved if she gets anything other than a slap on the wrist.
@dwayne_dibbly: it’s called “play the clip back” … you seriously didn’t think of that simple solution?
Here in Madison, WI you can’t even take a bag into the theater. The movie industry and the airlines are in a race to see who can recreate an Amistad experience first.
Who thinks, “Gosh this is a great part of the movie, let me take my attention away from it to find my camera and capture some of it” ? How do you know those 20 seconds are going to be any good?
@Buran:
So she says. However, that’d be my response too, if caught pirating a movie. “Oh, I was just filming a small snippet for my brother.” Sure, they could play the clip back, but she could have stopped recording as soon as she thought she was being watched. Even if she truly was “just recording 20 seconds”, if they accept that without ejecting her, that gives every pirate out there an out. Maybe I’ll just start going to Wal-Mart and stuffing stuff in my pockets. If I get caught, I can just say, “Oh, I didn’t have a basket and my arms were full. I was going to pay for it when I got to the checkout.” Or maybe next time I get pulled over for speeding I can say, “But officer, I was only speeding for the 20 seconds you saw me. I was driving for over an hour before that without ever even touching the speed limit.”
Did the theater overreact by pressing charges, etc? Possibly, but I just really can’t feel too much sympathy for someone a) breaking rules and b) being inconsiderate of fellow patrons by introducing a bright light source into the darkened-for-movie-enjoyment room.
@Snapjak: She’s looks HOT!!!
And yeah, it looks like a digital camera and not a camera phone. The BF said they “borrowed the camera from his sister”. If it was a camera phone, I doubt his sister (who I am assuming loves to yack on the phone) would have lend it to him.
@markwm: “being inconsiderate of fellow patrons by introducing a bright light source into the darkened-for-movie-enjoyment room.”
I would suggest you read back the post and figure out how moronic your comments are. She’s not even using a camcorder. Hello???
@erica.blog: That’s my issue with the whole thing, too. How did she know that this was the 20 seconds that would sell her brother on the movie? It’s just weird.
Regardless of her motivations, she didn’t steal anything. What she is accused of is copyright infringement.
MPAA marketing aside, this is an important distinction. Theft (basically) is the taking of an item from it’s lawful owner, depriving that owner of the item. This girl did not deprive the movie theatre anything. She made a copy, which is different, and dealt with in an entirely different section of the law.
(And no, potential profits don’t count – it is not stealing if I deprive wal-mart money by shopping at Target).
According to Copyright law, which is very different from criminal law, some forms of copying are perfectly OK. This may or may not be such an OK case – that is for the courts to decide. It is certainly not as black or white as some posters seem to think.
When I saw the police walk in I would of deleted the video off my phone and just told them I was checking my miss calls or something.
@markwm: Not all states have a shoplifting if conceled stature. Meaning you have to still cross the point of sale without paying, but you can use your pockets to hold stuff until you do pay.
I’m not even convinced this story is true, it sounds more like fear mongering to me. But it was on tv, so it MUST be true. Now anyone who films movies for profit are either at the drive in or work at the theatre and do it from behind the glass, otherwise you get heads in the way, laughing patrons, etc. If she’s not doing it for profit, then too bad for them. If you don’t like the lights, ask her to turn it off. It won’t me of much use if the film includes your voice every few seconds saying “turn it off”. And so what if a 20 second clip ends up on you tube. Are people really going to watch a series of 5 min videos in order, to watch the whole movie? Doubtful. If she didn’t like the movie can she get a refund? Absolutely not. So why can’t she film a clip, more like an ad, for her brother, who can then decide he likes it and goes and sees it, or choose not to? When I download movies free, if I really like them, I will go see them. Before I downloaded, I just didn’t go and waited for a friend to rent it and watch with them. I’m not paying for a movie I don’t like.
Typical “crime does not warrant the proposed penalty” situation here.
FACT: Kids do stupid stuff. There is no reason to ruin this kids life over something stupid like this. This girl was not re-marketing or re-distributing anything.
Oh and MR.GUNN, you need to relax man. The world is not as “black and white” as you paint it out to be. I hope someone is there to narc on you the next time you do something stupid so you can have a taste of the “crime does not warrant the proposed penalty.”
Does any company actually gain respect by prosecuting teenagers for misdemeanor crimes? I know that Regal thinks they HAVE to protect themselves from being taken advantage of, but geez, how much good press could they have gotten by handling this…ummm…ANY other way? Schmucks.
This is a great quote from the washingtonpost.com article:
Her boyfriend, Ivar Villazon, said the camera belongs to his sister; the couple borrowed it, Sejas said, to “make memories” on her birthday.
I don’t think the girl should be considered a felon but I also don’t support people waving around electronic devices with bright LCD screens during the movie. That includes checking you text messages.
@ARPRINCE: Are your reading skills that limited? She was using a digital camera to record the snippet. Digital cameras have LEDs on them to let you know they are on, and some models have an LED to let you know they are recording in video mode. They also all have nice-sized LCD viewfinders, which in a darkened movie theater would be very bright. I would suggest you go back and read the article to realize how moronic your rebuttal makes you look. Goodbye.
@markwm: Digital cameras also come with defused power LEDs so they arn’t bright, and the viewing angle on a LED is normally 25 degrees from dead center, so unless your looking straight down, it wouldn’t bother you. Second, most cameras (unlike camcorders) do not have a recording light. Third, almost all cameras have an option to turn of the lcd. I would suggest you go back and read the article to realize how moronic your rebuttal makes you look. Goodbye.
@ SnapJak: I’m glad somebody saw that.
On a side note, the post must be getting some ad money coming in from their in depth articles.
Now, if this was on a camera phone, it would still be illegal but I would like to see her not get charged. maybe a big fat warning.
Since it was on a real camera, which people do often carry around, it does show a little intent. I personally have never brought a camera into a movie theater for any reason. If you know you are going to a movie why would you need to carry a camera?
At the end of the day if it really is only 20 seconds, so what? leave her alone.
if it is more, especially if it is much more, fine her. I don’t think jail is even close to the proper punishment for this kind of thing (unless its a lot of movies for some crime ring, if those exist anymore)
P.S. does anyone else think she may be hot?
@Buran said : “Under fair use law, it IS legal to copy short clips of copyrighted works.” That is not entirely accurate. Fair use is dependent upon the USE of the material. The law is quite clear in that it must be for “…purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research…” (17 USC 107) Even then, there are further criteria which must be met as stated in the law. With this case, we don’t have to do that analysis b/c this case does not even get by the first hurdle.
This section is intended to be of public benefit for fair use of copyrighted works. That is why it exists. It is not there to show a clip to your brother/friend/etc.
It gets annoying when people blurt our fair use anytime someone breaks the copyright laws of this country. Either you skipped the day of law school when they went over Federal Law or you are a lay person who has heard of the phrase ‘fair use’ without the concept of its purpose.
It also makes me ill all of the people defending her. There is no chance that she did not know her actions were wrong. If she can operate a cell phone, she should know you cannot go to the movies and make short clips. You cannot even take stills of the screen. Why does everyone seem to condone digital crime? Because there is no physical theft? Thank you and have a nice day.
@cde:
In a darkened room, such as a theater, even a teeny-tiny diffused LED can be distracting. Granted it won’t be bright, but relative to the ambient light in the theater, it will be noticeable to those nearby. I didn’t say every camera has a record indicator. I said some do. I said this because that is exactly the case: some do.
As far as the LCD, yes the LCD can be turned off on most cameras. However, that is an option, and not the default. Given her logic faculties in deciding to attempt this stunt in the first place, I’m putting the odds on her not using that option, which means the screen was probably on.
I don’t see a thing in your post that contradicts what I said.
@markwm: I’ve got to hand it to you Mark. Nice spin!
This is another case of a manager not thinking ‘larger picture’. The adverse publicity from this will far outweigh making an example of someone violating copy right law. It is amazing that they didn’t pursue a common sense approach to a kid filming in thier theater.
@Buran: It doesn’t matter how long the clip was; she was caught red-handed by the assistant manager breaking the theater rules. No recording in the theater. Period. I don’t know how to put that in any simpler terms.
@Pelagius: I agree, and I’ve been going out of my way to patronize Cinebarre. It’s based off the same business model as the Alamo Drafthouses (for which the Cinebarre owner has signed a non-compete agreement), so we should be seeing more of these. The Cinebarre owner has said in interviews he wants to see at least 10 of these theaters in the next three years, and he’ll be retrofitting existing theaters whenever possible.
That doesn’t mean they’ll use the same crappy, cramped seating; it’s stadium seating. Very comfy, high backs, PLENTY of leg room. I couldn’t stretch my legs far enough to TOUCH the seats in front of me.
It’s quite a pleasant experience, really. Keep an eye out for them.
@Buran: regis.
waaaay overkill.
why is it the US can hammer some fool kid & ignore or discount the tons of professional pirates?
pathetic.
Luckily, most digital cameras these days have a delete feature. “Where’s your evidence, bitch!”
give the girl a break, she was trying to catch on camera that moment in history when optimus prime said ,”One shall stand, one shall fall” oh wait i thought it was 1986 again, but seriously those movie theaters are sure taking a world war 3 stance on this less than a minute clip of a movie that wasnt even well liked by those who grew up on the original stuff and even saw how horrible michael bay was to the stuff.
Wow.
I’ve been to that theatre.
Regal just lost 8 frequent customers since I always go with a group and coordinate tickets and the restaurant we eat at before the movie myself.
I was on the “give-the-kid-a-break” bandwagon, until I read it wasn’t a camera phone. I am not sure why I thought that in the first place.
Movies have an embedded anti-piracy code into the film that supposedly allows investigators to track down which theatre it came from. (you can see it in a few frames by some white dots that appear on screen for a few frames – In Transformers, you can see it near the end of the movie with the fight in the street)
So, lets say it was “only” a 20 second clip and it ends up on youtube. The MPAA investigates and finds out which theatre wasn’t doing its job. So, I can understand why the theatre acted the way it did.