Slashdot Mirror
Woman Filming Sister's Birthday Party Gets Charged With Felony Movie Piracy
A 22-year-old woman from Chicago recently spent two nights in jail and could face up to three years in prison for taping four minutes of the new movie Twilight: New Moon. Samantha Tumpach and family threw her sister a surprise birthday party at the theater and captured much of it on video. Unfortunately, two "very short segments" were enough to make theater managers want to press charges. "Tumpach insisted she recorded no more than three minutes while in the theater — and said not all of the video she shot was of the movie. There's footage of [Tumpach] and her relatives singing to her sister, she said. 'We sang "Happy Birthday" to her in the theater,' Tumpach said. She also took pictures of family members in the theater before the film began, but an usher who saw the photo session never issued them a warning, Tumpach said."
'We sang "Happy Birthday" to her in the theater,'
A copyrighted work? Performed in public? If I were a lawyer my nipples would explode with joy. The planets have aligned for an orgy of copyright violations! Tell me, in the video were you also photocopying the Harry Potter books with a scanner hooked up to a laptop with a cracked version of Windows 7 on it?
My work here is dung.
Check in the top 100 movies section.
This should be best release until the R5 which only contains 2 minutes of the movie along with footage of some guy named Dmitri's colonoscopy.
There is a near screener quality copy of the movie available, but unfortunately it contains the entire run length of the movie and is best avoided.
Two days in jail seems fitting, for the crime of annoying the hell out of every other moviegoer in the theater who paid $$ to watch a cheesy vampire emo movie.
unfortunately two "very shot segments" was enough to make theater managers want to press charges.
Shooting at anybody is grounds for assault with a deadly weapon. I didn't know they put guns in camcorders now. Fortunately that she will be out on parole sooner than if this was actually a copyright violation.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Let me see ... I'm reading from the actual law ... offender shall be set on fire dragged by the ears naked through Death Valley until ... oh wait! That's the penalty for sneering at an RIAA lawyer.
I'm not sure which is worse:
1. Video taping a movie in a theater
2. Singing happy birthday in the middle of a movie theater in the middle of a movie
3. Seeing New Moon
or else!
What I want to know is: Why were they singing "Happy Birthday" during the film?
If she's facing three years in jail for filming three minutes of Twilight, what is the movie's director of photography facing? Surely all ninety minutes of it, plus being the original creator of that, merits far more?
Next time Micheal Moore comes annoying some poor multinational CEO with his video camera, just repeal him with an iPhone playing some blockbuster flicks and call the cops!
That's discrimination against the Scots (kilts) and women (skirts, dresses)!
Also, in several jurisdictions, topless is legal for both sexes.
is not a crime. Singing during said crap movie should be. Let's get our priorities straight.
It also doesn't say if, when arrested, she had drugs on her, which clearly means she had 1 kg of coke on her, which she was distributing in the theater.
It doesn't say which birthday it was, so clearly the sister was a minor.
It doesn't say if they were wearing clothing or not, so clearly the "family birthday party" was child pornography.
It doesn't say if she killed any of the police officers who arrested her, so we can assume she did.
This drug-dealing, cop-killing, copyright violating child pornographer got away with only 2 days in jail. What the hell is wrong with this country? She should have been sentenced to die by lethal injection, then given the antidote and killed again for good measure. These bleeding-heart liberal judges have no sense of holy retribution.
I hate it when I make a joke and I get modded "+5 insightful". Mod the stupid comments "funny", not "insightful", pleas
Don;t be so smug, we're taking the rest of you with us...
"It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
Yet a dead person can hold a copyright - which can be wielded to put the living into perpetual debt.
...
Oh.
My.
God.
The zombies have already won - and they haven't even risen yet!
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
I will not buy that joke. It is old. And scratched.
If the body is still warm is it really necrophilia?
Anything can be found funny, from a certain point of view.
And who owns "the man"?
"The wife"
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I learned this in my concealed carry classes. My state has no legal provision for a property owner to post "no guns allowed" signs. They can post them but they have no force of law. All they can do is ask you to leave if they discover that you are armed -- you haven't actually broken any laws unless they ask you to leave and you decline to do so.
But those signs work well as a deterrent. I own land where we're building datacenter space on, and while I think the 15 foot fence with barbed wire will do the job, I've put signs up. They say "The use of lethal force is authorized at this installation" every 15 feet. Totally false of course. But it scare off most of the people who would want to cause trouble.
I'm gonna copyright, patent, trademark, and register the idea of coming up with an idea, and lobby the shit out of it. This way when you all come up with an idea, I'm gonna throw all you thieves in jail.
Idea ©®TM
All rights reserved.