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Canadian Theatre Chain Sued for Abusive Search
An anonymous reader writes "A Canadian theater chain has been sued for an abusive search for camcording equipment. A Montreal woman is seeking $60,000 in damages for the search, which comes after the Canadian government caved to US pressure and enacted anti-camcording legislation."
Anyone willing to watch a camcorder bootleg of a movie is not going to shell out for the product anyhow.
I hope this lady wins.
Regards.
The $60,000 claim seems to me to be a mite excessive too. If she was inconvenienced by it, I think a proper compensation would be in the order of a movie ticket.
Wasn't this search voluntary?
Shame that the sociopaths that run the place have decided that human decency is voluntary.
Not excessive. In Canada privacy is taken very seriously, to the point of having a Privacy Commissioner in government. What if the woman had some meds in her bag for herpes or other potentially embarrassing problem? What if it were you? Would you want some pimply faced kid going through your personal stuff?
Trolling is a art,
hacker ethic applied to government = anarchy by the way... everyone's favorite form of government until they realize that nobody else has to obey any stupid rules either and suddenly it's back to living in castles and giving up a couple freedoms for safety, and etc etc you get the picture
I agree, I don't think it's excessive, the number is there to make a point. The point is, the theater chains are going WAY overboard for an issue that is only an issue by propagandizing anyway. I think we are witnessing the death of the theater. As some said over at the Michael Geist site, who wants to go to a theater and be subjected to huge lines, searches, unsanitary conditions, and unassigned seating (aka huge waits while being beat in the head with ads) to see a movie they can purchase for life for $20.00 in 4 months? As the release to DVD gap begins to close, so too will the doors of the theater chains...
So your basic freedom, privacy is worth about a movie ticket? I know movie tickets are quite pricey nowadays, but I'd ask a bit more for basically blaming that I'm going to commit "a crime" and for unjustified personal search. But hey, you name your price. I'm happy there still exists people who do understand long term coincidences of not objecting against privacy infringement.
I'd have liked to see a definition of invasive. Did they strip-search her? Poke around in her bags? How invasive was this anyway?
If the point is to punish the theatre, wouldn't a fine work just as well? What has this woman done to deserve $60,000?
It's an important principle in Ius Commune that nobody should benefit from a crime. Once you start rewarding being a victim instead of compensating real losses, you make it desirable to become a victim. That's not in society's best interest.
Why wouldn't you carry whatever you wanted in your bag, and then tell someone who wanted to look in it to piss off and leave the premises?
The problem is that the government isn't doing anything about this stuff, so the lawsuit is the independent citizen version of a fine.
Good luck my Canadian friends. May you have more success then we have.
It's only paranoia if your wrong...
Copyrights are an incentive that societies use to promote creative work, not an inalienable human right.
Right. She had the freedom to leave instead of submitting to a search, and chose not to.
When I go to a rock concert, I submit to not only having external bags searched, but being frisked too. That's my choice -- I could always exercise my freedom to not be searched, and take my money elsewhere. That I choose to allow the inconvenience of a search doesn't entitle me to $60,000.
Okay, it's one thing when I get frisked going to a ballgame. I accept it on the slim chance it could prevent a violent person doing something stupid in a place with lots of people. I still don't like it, but I sort of understand it. But a movie theater? And a search for something as violently dangerous as a video camera? That is beyond absurd.
If people like her *don't* win cases like this, I shudder to think of how we'll all be treated in 20 years when trying to enjoy *any* kind of entertainment.
why? forty-two.
What has this woman done to deserve $60,000?
Probably an advance on the several several hundred to thousands of hours of what would otherwise be 'volunteer' time to spend fighting this case over the next several months to years.
It's an important principle in Ius Commune that nobody should benefit from a crime. Once you start rewarding being a victim instead of compensating real losses, you make it desirable to become a victim. That's not in society's best interest.
Its also a simple fact that you can't really sue someone to donate a nontrivial sum to charity (WITHOUT any tax benefits) and make a proper public apology. The system just isn't set up for that.
That said, I suspect if the movie theatre offered to settle, to donate 60k to charity in her name, and issue a public apology she'd probably consider it a win and take it.
I saw a guy walking out with a camera bag when I was leaving The Simpsons last weekend. Clearly, we have an Invasive Search Gap with our neighbor to the north.
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
Perhaps they didn't do a good job making it clear that it was voluntary. I've seen places that really skirt the edges of the law when it comes to private security and such. They do as much to make them look like cops as possible and try to give the impression that when they tell you something, you've no right to refuse. Thus if the theatre did that I could see how they'd be in trouble. As far as I'm concerned they should have to state something like "We want to search you and/or your belongings prior to this movie. This is a voluntary search. If you don't agree to be searched, we won't let you in the theatre, but will refund the money for your ticket. Is it ok if we search you?" That I'm fine with, especially since maybe then people will stand up and say "fuck you" and leave. If enough people do that, they'll stop the damn searches (or go out of business). However I could easily see it being more along the lines of "Give me your bag, we are going to search it before you enter. No, you don't have a choice."
Having work a short time in music promotions I know a number of venues that require searches upon entry and personally never felt there was a problem with it. If you don't like to policies of a place, like a private club that doesn't all women or something like that, don't sue the place, just don't go there, or open your own venue that meets your interests. Besides, only an idiot takes an audio recorder to a concert and only an even bigger idiot takes a video recorder to a movie.
There are far more theatres where these sorts of privacy invasions are not occurring than those where they actually are. I don't abide by what this theatre chain has decided to do, but what's happened here is the exception and not the rule what is happening in Canadian theatres. The anti-camcording law brings stiff penalties to people who record in the theatres but _DOES NOT_ authorize the theatres to search patrons. The new bill does give theatre owners a little more leverage in getting criminal charges filed against people they catch recording, however, effectively making a stronger deterrent against repeat offenders. Where previously many theatres simply had a policy of simply kicking the patron who was caught recording the movie out of the theatre, and nothing more was ever done, theatre owners and managers in Canada now at least have the ability to legally detain a person who has done this until the cops they've called arrive.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
As a manager of a large movie theatre, I participate in the annual NATO (National Association of Theatre Owners) meetings, and I can tell you legitimately that the industry heads are not particularly worried about downloaders. What they ARE worried about, are the sophisticated rings of people who record a movie with state of the art miniaturized cameras, upload it to DVD fab plants in Malasia, and press literally millions of bootleg DVDs in a matter of a night or two, and have them shipped back out and on street corners by the end of the film's opening weekend. Downloaders are a different demographic and situation entirely from bootleggers. In general, a sold bootleg DVD is a loss of sale for a theatre, while a downloaded movie is kind of breaking even - either the person will like the movie and go see it, like it but be too cheap to go see it, or not like it and not go see it. You don't hear much about the MPAA suing everyone they can get their hands on - mostly because they learn from their impetuous brother the RIAA, and realized that you won't improve your business via suing, you actually have to accept some losses, fight the ones you can, and do your damndest to make movie going an enjoyable experience.
It's poetry with a beat behind it! And guns! They're like beatniks with automatic weapons.
Many businesses are built around catering to social activities. That is, people just naturally like doing certain things. The way a big light shining on a dark wall can fake us into thinking it's a portal into another world is one example. People like to gather together and admire this phenomenon. People like to dissect how the artist achieves the illusion. People like to see it with their friends and share it. People like to make out in the back.
Movie chains did not invent this social activity, they merely use it. Movie chains do not determine how we like to socialize, they merely take advantage of the fact that we do.
Movies are a cultural activity. Why then only apply economic theory to movie theaters? Instead of just saying, private enterprise has the right to do what it wants, why not say, people in general have the right to do what they want?
The standard answer would be, economic theory, capitalism specifically, has been shown to provide efficient solutions to economic problems. Which is a non-sequitur, because that wasn't the question. The question was, why shouldn't people be allowed to socialize as they want, unfettered? If movie chains want to cater to that fine, but by what social thinking are movie chains allowed to dictate how we socialize? Being subject to a non-safety search probably affects the social aspect of the experience.
Realistically, this is the way things are right now, there's not much we can do. But I disagree that the application of market theory to cultural activities makes any sense. Saying that customers can vote with their feet misses the point, people don't want to go do something else. It's just that, there's no way to quantify how that aggravation compares to the theaters' profits.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
Well... She had functional legs, right? the old 180-walk should work, although maybe insisting on a refund for the ticket first would be a good idea.
I'll see if I can't be a little more polite than some of the other comments.
In summary, you are wrong.
In detail then . . .
As has already been pointed out, the only reviewed study of music and movie pirating via P2P has shown that there is no impact to the music or movie industries. Scroll up for the academic reference.
There are two reasons (from my experience) that theater gross receipts may be off,
The product is just plain bad. Couple a poor product with many online forums discussing the poor product, and second week receipts will be down. Some of my personal observations concerning recent movies follows.
The movie going experience is also unpleasant. The theaters are usually a mess, the staff is unpleasant to rude, and I don't even bother buying concessions. I no longer go to Regal Theaters after I was denied entry (after purchasing a ticket). I had purchased an umbrella on a sunny day. Since I was on my bike at the time, I couldn't leave the purchase in the car. The manager claimed that the umbrella could be used as a weapon and would not allow me to enter the theater with a paid ticket. They no longer get my business.
I never pay full price for movies. I attend matinee shows. Even then, many movies are not worth the $6.
I don't use P2P systems, except for updating games and getting the new version of Fedora. While I have a reasonable Internet connection, I will not waste my time, disk space, or a DVD on most commercial movies. Those few that I like, I will purchase, with the exception of Sony Pictures. I never know if a Sony product will play on my computers due to their use of DRM. Hence, they don't get my business.
Camcorder bootlegs are not something that people buy or download. I have friends in Malaysia, and they all scoff at camcorder copies. People discussing ripped movies on Usenet complain about highly compressed movies, color banding, and color bleed-over. No one is going to waste any time, disk space, or recordable media on camcorder bootlegs.
So based on my personal experience, the experience of many people in countries where US copyrights are largely ignored, discussions on Usenet, and refereed articles you are misinformed.
I personally find it astonishing that people's resentment of personal freedom goes so far as to resent people actually trying to increase it rather than accept further curtailments of it. I don't really think this case is where I'd focus my energy, but frankly anything helps. The idea that buying a ticket to enter a place entitles the people at the door to view the contents of my bag is fucking absurd, regardless of what you construe as "consent" (and I'm sure we could talk about other issues of "consent" where it'd be clear that manipulated consent isn't genuine consent).
So... You were assaulted by a member of the staff and then meekly left when asked to leave? You could have stood your ground, asked for a refund of the fee and then watched the film with some free popcorn in return for not pressing charges. That would have been fair and a reasonable application of the law to stop over-zealous idiots...
~Pev
Well personnally I don't understand how these craps can be so worried for the industry.
I have tried them.
Screener/bootlegged copy have a very poor/mediocre sound quality. There are large parts of the movie which is blurred, litteraly unwatchable. It gives you headaches. Nobody truly interested by the movie will ever download such a crap.
Ripped DVDs is on the other hand is usually an acceptable quality (comparable to VHS). This by far a biggest threat. and in my case, I usually find Ripped DVDs on a torrent before the European release.
What bullshit.
These "miniature cameras" you talk about don't produce an image worth downloading, let alone paying even $1 for. I've seen a bit of a bootleg once and it was PAINFUL to watch. I couldn't watch a whole movie like that unless you paid me for it.
No, the professionals don't do that sort of crap, as it'd be unprofitable. Professionals do one of these:
Option A: They copy your original DVD, remove crap from it (CSS, skip restrictions, etc), stamp it, and sell for a fraction of the original price, providing a better product overall. Not only it's cheaper, but it's less annoying to play as well as it won't be region locked and play on anything.
They're friendly too. I saw this in Russia years ago (I think it's not as balant now). They had a HUGE market where you could get lost easily. The seller will gladly tell you their opinion on the movie, will change your disc if it doesn't play (warranty!), and will even find something for you if you ask. They provide good service, unlike what you get when buying legally.
Option B: They get somebody with the access to the film and with a projection booth, and do a professional setup, filming the movie without an audience in the way, and with an exact copy of the audio.
How to solve this problem? My suggestions:
1. Drop the anti-piracy crap. No CSS, no region locking, no unskippable sections
2. I bought/paid to see the damn movie, I don't want to hear a word about anti-piracy moralizing.
3. I don't want to see any ads in the cinema, nor on the DVD. Only possible exception is optional trailers that you must specifically play, related to what the disk contains (eg, trailers of Miyazaki's anime, on the Nausicaa DVD)
4. Sell it cheaper, especially the music. Why can the soundtrack have the same price as the movie? It makes no sense.
They are not interested in finding camcorders in your bags.
This is just a pretext to SEARCH YOU FOR ILLICIT SNACKS.
Theaters make very little money from ticket sales, and a huge chunk of their revenue comes from overpriced concessions. The cost-conscious movie fan knows to bring a bottle of water (or beer!) and some skittles, and this pretty much halves the cost of your evening. The theatre loses money, but there's really not much they can do about it.
Until now.
This is not a police search, so there is no legal problem with searching for one thing and finding another. They search your bag for cameras, find the skittles, publicly embarass you for being a cheapskate, and turn you away.
Meanwhile, the smart people who buy or download the DVD can eat and drink whatever the hell they want. Maybe along with the anti-piracy ads there should be a warning to only use MPAA-approved snacks for the duration of the movie.
I'm not sure how often it's unreasonable to "blame the 'States". This time it's reasonable. We even heard about on-going attempts by first the film industry and then later by the US govt. to get this kind of law passed. There was even a PR campaign launched and pressed by the US govt. to get US citizens to think of Canada as a "nation of media pirates".
Were I a Canadian I would not think very charitably of the US govt., and I would definitely blame it for the passage of this law...and for any and all unpleasant results.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.