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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!"
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.
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.
Place sig here.