Senate Unanimously Passes Anti-Camcorder Bill

jamonterrell writes "The US Senate just unanimously passed a bill allowing the criminal prosecution of recording movies with a camcorder in theatres. Victims of the new bill would face 3 years in prison on first offense (5 if it was done for profit), repeat offenders would get 10 years. As a side note, it will cost taxpayers an additional 5 million dollars per year through 2009 for enforcement." Several states have made recording in theaters a crime, although none of them have penalties nearly as harsh as this Senate bill.

Comments

telesync and telecine

[Depris]

For the record telesync is when audio is captured directly off the reel and a high quality camcorder is setup in an empty theather to capture the film on as best as possible. telecine captures everything directly off the reel and is usually as good as vhs/dvd. both methods usually accomplished with help of theater employee's.

Re:Phht

[karstux]

Of course it sucks when you have to watch ads just after having had to pay a good deal of cash for the right to watch a movie. But I don't think the cinemas would survive without the ads - since most of the ticket price goes directly to the distributor.

Here at least (germany), the cinemas live on the ads, popcorn and cola - not on the movies. It's a neccessary evil, and completely unrelated to the copyright issue.

Irrelevant legislation

[Jarnis]

Nobody bothers with cam copies anymore anyway. You can find good telecines/telesyncs within a few days of release already.

Telesync = empty theater, cam on a tripod, sound from the theater sound panels. So theater employees are helping or doing it. Studio's own fault for not securely handling the prints/theaters. Ah but the theaters want to get by with just one guy running multiple showings being paid just bit over minimum wage while working long hours. And you wonder why these guys 'leak' stuff?

Telecine = print of the movie, telecine machine, basically an unauthorized film-to-digital transfer. Requires complete access to the print at a location with a telecine machine. DEFINITELY means that studios don't handle the security of the prints as they should. Nobody should be able to walk out of a theater with the print to telecine it. Meaning some prints end up in wrong hands - either out of the theaters or from the studios themselves.

And since law is apparently only vs. cammers, getting the print telecined is still apparently just a copyright infringement.

Of course buying a law against teleciners would make the studios admit that their prints are not handled securely and that the movie theater employees are leaking like hell. If pirates commonly can get the whole print in their hands and run it thru a telecine machine at their leisure, that would possibly wake up the lawmakers that this law is beyond stupid and does nothing to curb piracy.

Bill text

[0x0d0a]

You *could* disable your camcorder (cover the lens or whatnot) and proceed to pretend to "film" the movie while watching it. It's quite legal, even if it might drive theater managers nuts. It also makes enforcement of this infeasible, if done widely enough.

Here is the bill text, which should really have been included in the story. (Actually, IMHO, Slashdot policy should be to require a link to bill text when submitting a story on new legislation.)

Re:Name one person.

[general_re]

Name two people who are actually doing REAL prison time for defrauding investors.

Why? Typically people who ask for things like that will simply dismiss any names given as not being REAL enough.

Here's a list of names - you can decide for yourself if the penalties they faced or face are REAL enough to suit you: Andrew Fastow, Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, Dennis Levine, Martin Seigel, Ben Glisan, Michael Kopper. And many, many more.