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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."
It's only a good case if it gets bench time. If charges are dropped before it goes to trial, or if she does a plea for probation to avoid possible further jail time, then nothing happens.
Personally, I would hope this turns into a situation where she goes to trial, is found not guilty, and then is able to sue for malicious prosecution or whatever else the nastiest, meanest, pit-bull-of-an-attorney she hires can drum up since it's obviously not a piracy situation. At least from the story, it sounds like law was not followed to its intent.
Yeah, they can have a no-cameras, no flash-photography policy in a privately-owned publicly-accessible place. If they catch you taking pictures, a big guard comes up to you and orders you to leave the premises: then if you stay there, you've committed the crime of trespassing.
They can't exact physical violence against you to prevent you from taking pictures though, and taking your camera, or destroying film, is illegal for them to do (and may result in you suing).
> the Happy Birthday song has been in the public domain for over 100 years, it's unlikely that someone has any valid claim to it...
Uhhmm. No. The happy birthday copyright is in full force.
Ever wonder why those food places have the servers gather round and sing some really stupid non-happy birthday song to the birthday person.
The Happy Birthday copyright is vigorously defended.
http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/birthday.asp
I don't know how it works exactly as the song predates current copyright limits.
This sounds to me like the downside providing cash incentives to employees for catching those who record movies.
http://www.fightfilmtheft.org/en/todo.asp
Some employee thinks they are in line for a $500 bonus.
Let's hope copyright law is reformed by the time electronics are integrated into our brains.
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
More likely he asked them to stop because they were annoying the other customers, and they were un-compliant and un-apologetic, so he called the cops.
They also believed that every citizen needed to own a gun in order to protect the nation.
In other words, they believed things that were true in the late 18th century.
Owning a gun to protect the nation is as much true today as it was in the late 18th century. In Switzerland, they still believe it, and to this day they don't waste any money on a standing army. Instead, every militia member (which is every male 18-45) has a fully-automatic rifle in his house, ready to defend his nation if necessary. When WWII came around and Hitler and Mussolini invaded almost every country in Europe, he left little Switzerland alone because of this.
They also believed that it was just peachy to own people who's skin was darker than theirs.
No, they didn't. That's another liberal lie. Many of the Founding Fathers were against slavery, and it was strongly debated during the formation of the Union. They decided to compromise and allow the South to keep slavery so that they could keep them in the Union, because if they hadn't, they wouldn't have had a Union at all and wouldn't have been able to stand up against Britain.
You do realize the "Founding Fathers" weren't of one mind about everything, don't you? Anyone who has a clue about American history knows they were divided into two main camps, the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists.
No matter what, copyright and patents should *never* continue past death.
There have to be some exceptions - I shouldn't be able to have someone assassinated and then be able to legally sell my own copies of his recently copyrighted stuff.
perhaps someone could explain to me why the "land of the free" has the largest prison population on the planet?
Because the Congress has been captured. The movie studios own the news media, and any candidate that doesn't toe the MAFIAA party line gets buried in the press. It's not even just movie studios: a lot of U.S. prisoners are in on nonviolent drug possession charges, and that's because synthetic chemical companies can't take one bit of competition from the hemp plant.
Wait - we were talking about Switzerland, not about Iraq. Did you change the subject because you figured out that the argument didn't hold water?
If you want to talk about Afghanistan, no one is interested in conquering Afghanistan. It's a pile of dirt whose only significance is that there used to be some bad guys there. It's a strict counter-terrorism operation, with the hope that at some point, the place won't turn into another failed state and haven for terrorists. No one is talking about conquering anything.
If you want to talk about Vietnam, you realize that North Vietnam had tanks, an airforce, AA guns, artillery - all kinds of heavy equipment that goes way beyond a few rifles?
If you think that your hunting rifle is what stands between Freedom Fries and a Gulag, you're delusional.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.