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A Year In Prison For a 20-Second Film Clip?
PizzaFace writes "It's Jhannet's 19th birthday, so her boyfriend borrows a camcorder to memorialize the occasion, and they head to the mall. They goof around, recording each other in the food court, then decide to catch the Transformers matinee, which started a few minutes earlier. During a big action scene, Jhannet takes the camcorder and records a 20-second clip to show her little brother. A few minutes later, cops who were called by the manager come in with flashlights, arrest Jhannet, confiscate the camcorder, and, at the behest of Regal Cinemas, charge her with film piracy. 'I was terrified,' said Jhannet. 'I was crying. I've never been in trouble before.' If convicted, she could be sentenced to a year in prison and a $2,500 fine. The police say they lack discretion because Regal Cinemas chose to prosecute: 'They were the victim in this case, and they felt strongly enough about it.' The National Association of Theater Owners supports Regal's 'zero-tolerance' prosecution standard: 'We cannot educate theater managers to be judges and juries in what is acceptable. Theater managers cannot distinguish between good and bad stealing.'"
If videotaping in a movie theater is illegal, and if that is what occurred in this instance - and indeed, the person in question admits just that - then why is this acceptable? Why should the theater decide between "good and bad stealing"?
Isn't that for a judge and jury to decide?
Would it be acceptable to record twenty seconds? Two minutes? Twenty minutes? The entire movie?
(Believe it or not, there actually could be an answer here..."fair use" does have specific provisions for how long clips can be, what they can be used for, and so on.)
I realize most here on slashdot probably won't agree with this, and think that "copyright", or at least its current form in the US, which is the basis for prohibiting things like recording in movie theaters, ought to be done away with completely.
But if any claim on content ownership is supportable and valid in any legal framework, mustn't there necessarily be mechanisms to enforce related laws and prohibit its violation? And when there is a violation, and an agent that is party to the violation chooses to press charges for what may be the violation of a local, state, or federal statute in various circumstances, shouldn't a judge and jury be the ones to decide the outcome?
The article says:
"We cannot educate theater managers to be judges and juries in what is acceptable," he said. "Theater managers cannot distinguish between good and bad stealing."
Macdowell said the trade association, which represents 28,000 screens nationwide, realizes there is a difference between "egregious acts of stealing our movies and more innocent ones." But he said that distinction needed to be made in court rather than by theater managers.
Not everyone agrees.
And then comes the predictable reply:
"The movie industry needs to recognize that their audience isn't the enemy," said Cindy Cohn, general counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based nonprofit group that specializes in digital rights issues. "They need to stop treating their fans like criminals. . . . What they're doing is extremely unreasonable, coming down on this poor girl who was actually trying to promote their movie."
The "your customers aren't the enemy" reply.
But you can easily argue that recording the entire movie and posting it on a torrent site also "promotes" the movie. Or that posting TV shows not available in certain markets "promote" the TV show. In fact, many make just that argument. Indeed, you can find many examples of how online "piracy" has increased or enhanced loyalty to various music, television shows, and so on.
The only problem is, that's not your decision to make. That's the content owner's decision.
The only way to allow the behavior in this particular instance is to make recording movies in theaters legal, or have ridiculous provisions like time limits on number of seconds or minutes that can "legally" be recorded, that theaters would then have to enforce.
Where do you draw the line?
Copyright may not be perfect, and trade and industry groups may vigorously try to protect content. But that is their right under the current legal framework, and absurd examples don't really serve any function in having any real change, other than being able to be used as a rallying cry for people who DO fundamentally believe that we should be able to record entire movies in movie theaters, or entire TV shows, or entire DVDs, and post them to torrent sites, with no fear of retribution.
And I don't think either extreme makes sense.
Go up to their ticket office. Ask to see the manager. Cite this case. Tell them you're going to take your business elsewhere. Write a letter to the corporate headquarters as well.
By itself, no result.
100,000 times repeated, different story.
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My problem with what they did though is that if they wanted to show him a piece of the movie, why not grab the movie trailer off the internet? There is no reason to record a movie while you're watching it in a theater.
How does the theater know they were only planning to record a bit of the film? How do they know they weren't trying to film the whole movie?
If they win, nothing will happen. Most people see how stupid someone is for using a camcorder in a movie theater.
1) If it was only a 20 second clip, they're covered by fair use provisions.
2) No judge is going to give her a year in prison, even if it was just the first 20 seconds before she got caught
3) Teenagers do dumb things, none of us are any different, and learning to deal with the consequences is part of growing up. Next time, I'm sure she'll be much more sneaky and effective in her attempts at piracy, and I'm sure other teenagers will learn from this example and so will be too.
4) That's ONE teenager with a video camera down, and several hundred thousand, plus the legions of others in less corporately controlled countries to go. Good job, MPAA, you'll have this thing nipped in the bud in no time.
It just goes to show that "Zero Tolerance" might as well be a synonym for "Zero Intelligence."
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That's been scientifically proven untrue. The world needs a certain amount of harmless lying to grease the social wheels. It makes our society function better.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
..is that she isn't being accused of criminal copyright infringement. That law depends on the definition of copyright infringement, which in turn lists various exemptions, such as Fair Use. It's something most peopel are familiar with, and has centuries of history behind it.
Fair Use is not a factor in this case. It's not a valid defense, even though on the surface and to most laymen, this sounds like a story about copyright infringement. It's not. Anyone who says, "Oh, it won't be so bad, because clearly this is Fair Use," does not understand what is happening here.
She's accused of using an audiovisual recording device in a theater, which is a different law and which contains no references to copyright infringement, and has no exemptions. It's like the anti-circumvention prohibition in DMCA, where it simply outlaws a possibly non-infringing activity, without regard for why you're doing it, without exempting activities that most people assume are perfectly fair, since those activities do not harm a copyright holder's market in any way. (Though it might harm their other markets, e.g. selling playback devices.)
These are radical new laws. Common sense and centuries of tradition and common law, do not apply! The layman doesn't even know this crap exists, or he thinks it's merely a refinement or update to copyright law.
It's ironic when some Slashdotters say things like, "the media companies need to update their business models and get with the times." Don't you see? They have. They've purchased new restrictions that go far beyond any normal person's expectations or knowledge. It's happening right under your nose, and the scum who are voting for and signing these laws, go unpunished in elections.
Why would they be punished? Only nerds and pedants care about the details of law, and the principles that it rests upon.
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