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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."
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.