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MPAA Close to Another "Stealth Victory" in Ohio
Tsar writes "The Ohio State Legislature has passed House Bill #179 (PDF / HTML / Status) which, among other unrelated issues, makes it illegal to make an AV-recording in any theater or retail store where a motion picture is being displayed. Walk into a store that sells video gear and hit 'Record' on any camcorder, digital camera or PDA; the first click is a misdemeanor, the rest are felonies. Oh, and the janitor (or any employee) can detain you in or near the store until police arrive if they think you hit 'Record'. Actually recording any of a film (or even knowing that a film was being shown) is not required for a conviction. This bill now awaits Governor Bob Taft's signature--Ohioans, let him know what a bad law this is!"
what, you mean it's not a joke ?
#include "coucou.h"
what about cctv in a video store? mobile phones that can take quick videos with audio are beginning to come out - what if you use one to decide on a movie in the local video store - or even just use the phone since they can detain you on suspicion.
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Unfortunately, this is the basic problem with law today. From a geeks perspective, false positives are horrenduously bad. From a lawmaker's perspective, they aren't intending for anyone to prosecute these "fringe" cases and so don't consider it to be a big deal. Unfortunately, this is increasingly heading towards a state whereby everybody is guily of something, which is not good for the civil liberties front - if the government/bigco doesn't like you for whatever reason, they are bound to find something to nail you with.
According to my interpretation of this law, consider the Circuit City delima. As Circuit City sells televisions and their floor models are constantly playing movies for demonstration purposes, the following things are now illegal inside the store:
* As a customer, taking a video recording of your friends with your own cell phone.
* As a customer, trying out the video recording feature of a cell phone that you are interested in purchasing.
* As a customer, trying out the video recording capabilities of a camcorder or other dv device before purchasing.
* As a salesperson, demonstrating the video capabilities of cell phones or camcorders.
* As the store itself, recording images from their own security cameras.
Because of this law, Circuit City would have to disallow their customers from trying out in the store the very products they sell, stop their salespeople from demostrating their own products, and disable their own security cameras.
Only in America, folks, would we let corporations making such a laughing stock of the public.
They got Al Capone for tax evasion
1) The provisions of being detained if you're believed to be trying to walk off with copyrighted material has been there already; this bill doesn't change that.
2) This only applies to theaters and retail stores, and appears to have exceptions for government recording for security purposes. (It doesn't mention private industry security, though.)
3) The bill just mentions usage of such a device in the facility; it doesn't mention recording actual copyrighted content (this is the major reason why I'm bothered by it).
4) The bill appears to leave judgement, for the most part, up to the retailers themselves; they're expected to enforce it. (So I doubt demo units are going to be a serious issue, unless there's an overzealous MPAA policeman nearby.)
In short, the only flaws I see are that it covers things it has no business covering (uncopyrighted content) and it doesn't allow for those two common industry practices of demonstration and security cameras. Change those and I think it's OK.
I know that some places already prohibit recordings of any kind anyways, but there's a world of difference between being kicked out of the theater and being arrested. I think being arrested for taking a picture of your kids in the lobby is going a little far. (I'm hoping that theater employees will be relatively sane about such things, though, since enforcement is left to them.)
--
viqsi - See "vixen"
If we do not change our direction we are likely to end up where we are headed.
You head over to Best Buy to look at TV's. While there you happen to swing by the entertainment center display and see one that you think the SO would particularly like. Since (s)he ain't with ya at the time you whip out the cell phone and snap a pic of it to show them later.
Congrats, you've just broken the law. If you snap a second entertainment center for comparison purposes it gets even worse.
No, the problem with laws like these is that they are overly broad, poorly written, and most important don't stop the activity that they're trying to outlaw.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
At first glance this seemed reasonable. Then, I thought about it a bit and came up with a few minor problems.
I find it hard to believe that customers would go in to a store, aim a camera at a tv and stand there for an hour or so to get a movie on video. (Sure a gang of such could get together and have a hundred people or so each grab a couple minutes, but that seems unlikely, difficult to manage, and most importantly unprofitable)
I find it much easier to believe that employees might grab a dvd thats been returned (or otherwise opened), take it home and return it the next day. And I'm not sure this law covers that.
In theatres, it might work, but I suspect that with the improvements in technology it would not be all that hard to get tiny (tiny!) cameras on wireless networks to a van outside the theatre and grab things that way. But if the cameras are small enough they'd be close to undetectable.
And as above the insiders are probably the real problem. Don't forget the employee viewings of films on thursday nights which are (for all practical purposes) private viewings and hence it would be unlikely that the constabulary (or other authorities) would even know it was taking place. (The copies would exist, so you might manage to shut down a minimally profitable theatre in a small town from time to time - but somehow I doubt it would have much of an effect on the process in general.)
If this only happens in Ohio it will have no effect whatever. Which means that the MPAA will need to pass these laws in every state for them to mean anything. But having such a law in one state will allow lobbyists to say "But the folks in Ohio have this law..." If they're smart though, they'll tack on extra provisions each time a law is passed so they can then go back to (say) Ohio and say "Now Indiana has a better law than you do, so you must pass this new law or you'll have a Law Gap and schoolchildren around the world will point at you and laugh!"
So the law is both silly and dangerous.
Which means we should all laugh hysterically while we flee in terror.
Got a beef with your local video store? Walk in with that portable display, and then have the store clerks, management, owners, etc all charged because they've recorded you via CCTV.
The best bit is the provision that would allow you to restrain them pending the arrival of the police. You may not be an employee of the facility, but you're the copyright holder on your video, right?
And let me tell you, when you catch them, you do not want them to be caught without a law specifically forbidding the exact method they employ
I think that's the important part... These new laws they're passing are unneccessary. Don't we already have laws that make copyright infringement illegal? Which would mean that if someone actually did tape something in a store like this, they would be infringing copyright, which we already have a law for.
Argh.
It's like drugs. The drugs themselves shouldn't be illegal. If someone wants to purchase and/or use drugs, it's their body, let them. If they start doing things because of the drugs that affect other people (like robbing, shooting, driving cars into things, etc), then they should be prosecuted for the crimes they commit. Another example of redundant and unneccessary laws.
We already have laws for the crimes, we don't need laws for every possible method or action that might lead you to the breaking of the already existing laws.
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You're probably right, and it most likely won't be used for that. The problem arises from the fact that it could be used like that. If the intent of the law is something different, then the law should be re-written to be more clean on its intent, so that it cannot be misused.
As one other poster pointed out, a perfect example of how the law in its current state could be abused would be the news crew that's doing an investigative report or expose on the movie theater concession stand and its health violations (or something like that). Pissed off movie theater owner/manager doesn't like this, and calls the cops. News crew could be prosecuted under this law.
If a law can be used for something other than what it was intended for, it's too broad. Just because it "probably won't" be used for other purposes is no reason why it should be allowed w/out revision.
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