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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.
Is that a camcorder in your pocket or are you just happy to see the movie?
"Kittens give Morbo gas!"
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,
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...
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?
The problem is that the government isn't doing anything about this stuff, so the lawsuit is the independent citizen version of a fine.
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 don't know. Most movie theaters around here (I'm not in Canada) are in malls and most people go shopping in malls (even when catching a flick). I don't think it would be out of the ordinary to sea people with two or three bags from different vendors. If the movie was one of the later ones, the shops would probably have been closed like they are in my area.
I wouldn't mind the search if it was up front and I was told about it when buying my tickets. But if it was inside the theater and after I went past the part where they rip the tickets in half and by some dumbass who treats you like your a shoplifter or something, I would have a serious problem with it.
I have/had a rather large cell phone with a clip on it and after losing it several times, I turn it around to where the phone is inside my pants pocket and the clip hangs on the outside. I had some punk at a department store accuse me of shoplifting after hanging up from a call. (This was in the mid 90's). None the less, I showed him the cell phone and it should have been dropped at that but he insisted that I empty everything in my pockets then attempted to take me by force to the management's office. I turned around and started walking out of the store and an off duty cop they rented stopped me. I told him he would have to arrest me and he put me in cuffs right there in front of every one.
Ok, long story short. I never got charged with anything because it was just my phone, about $40 and some change in my pockets and an over zealous stock boy. I guess the store gave their employees $100 plus the price of whatever was stolen if they catch a shoplifter. I sued the store for the embarrassment and hassle for $500, lawyer fees (who said I would probably lose) and the largest article in the local newspapers that they could buy to advertise an apology to me. The judge increased the the $500 to $10,000 and made them place a sign at the front of the store so everyone going in would know they messed up. I hear they did the same to someone else who got about $150,000 or so a couple years later from the same judge. I was 19 or 20 and almost lost a job paying twice as much as the normal in the area for the time because someone in management saw it happen and said they needed trust worthey employees working with them.
If what happened in Canada is even close to what happened to me, the $60,000 could be some normal number that something like this usually carries. It could have been her attorney asking for it more then her. I guess the judges and juries, at least in America, can increase the amount asked for under some conditions like the store encouraging the behavior. I hope that if it was something like what happened to me, they throw a couple of 1's and 0' around the $60,000 and makes the theater really think twice about how they handle people.
This search has nothing to do with the Canadian government but theatre owners. The infamous Bill C-59 (http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publicat ion.aspx?DocId=2993072&Language=e&Mode=1&File=24) is not law yet and gives no additional rights for anyone to search anyone for anything.
Even if C-59 was passed, which is not likely, no one would ever see jail time over it. Good luck proving an intent to distribute the recording and no judge in Canada would ever put anyone away for even a day for a non-violent offense with a maximum sentence of only 2 years.
Once again, this is simply theatre owners reacting to intense industry pressure. This is not a story about the oppressive Canadian government.
I'm a big fan of a greyscale night-vision mode with an infrared filter on a sunny day at the beach myself.
If she's not so hot, someone else can search her while I record the movie on my fancy camera.
Some rights aren't waived by the kind of implicit contracts that just buying a ticket entail, and in Canada, apparently, the right to a certain level of privacy is one of them. I think that's a good thing.
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
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.