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."
There’s footage of she and her relatives singing to her sister, she said. “We sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to her in the theater,” Tumpach said.
“You can hear me talking the whole time,” Tumpach said.
All of this in a theater. And it doesn't say if they rented it out exclusively, meaning there were other paying patrons trying to watch the fucking movie
She should get the death penalty or, if I'm feeling really really pissed, have her listen to my mother complain why I don't call enough.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
Best case would be if she could get off on a technicality (e.g. the amount filmed was too short to count for the felony), but even then she still has to live with being arrested.
I agree, but it is a small price to pay for doing something as stupid as pointing a video camera at a movie screen. Hopefully the story will prevent others from doing the same.
I know that if I lived in Chicago, I'd kill myself. (It's like the festering puss wound of America)
"It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
First, she should be arrested for encouraging an entire group to sing INSIDE A MOVIE THEATER. Being stupid enough to do that is one thing, but then she records it, IN THE MOVIE THEATER! There are signs everywhere in these places about recording devices and such. In these cases, it is a federal crime. This isn't copying off the internet. This is the source and they protect it aggressively. Third, she went and saw twilight new moon. This is clearly 3 strikes of being stupid and she ought to be locked up\
This woman is obviously fucking scum. I hope she gets ass raped in jail daily for her completely immoral behavior.
Going to see Twilight... thats just sick.
At least from the story, it sounds like law was not followed to its intent.
Intent? That has nothing to do with it. The law states if you're filming the moving in a theater you go to jail. There's nothing in the law about intent. She should do 3 years.
Who is John Galt?
I think its time to do away with copyright completely, given the level it is abused.
Well, Irak was of the same opinion. It seemed to stand not so very well against a properly standing army, not against the USA one at least.
Last time I checked, US troops are still dying in Iraq left and right. In fact, many more died there after the defeat of the Iraq's regular military, due to the insurgency, than before, IIRC. Apparently, a bunch of rag-tag Iraqi freedom fighters were able to take a heavier toll on America's best-trained troops than Iraq's regular army. And this makes sense too: it's a lot easier for an advanced military power to defeat another lesser power on an open battlefield with advanced weaponry, than to go door-to-door and fight people in their own homes.
On that mood, do you think the privately owned weapons by USA civilians would be of much use against the USA army power, nukes and all included? I don't think so.
You sound like another liberal moron. Why would a country's government nuke itself? Just mentioning that shows what an idiot you are. How useful are nukes in Iraq? Oh wait, we haven't used them...
You can't control a populace if you kill them all. And you can't kill them all with the military unless the military agrees, and they're not going to if the populace includes their own families and countrymen. Yours is just a stupid nonsensical liberal argument against gun ownership.
>>>And under true free market, profit oriented corporations are more than able to *buy* regulations.
Under a "true" free market, corporations wouldn't even exist because they are a creation of government, so if the government takes a handsoff approach to the economy, the Incorporation License would be a non-entity. Instead you'd have private citizens who are directly responsible for their business transactions. No corporations.
Anyway:
I'd like to know why this lady spent two nights in jail for a *civil* violation. If she did infringe upon copyright, the punishment should be doled-out by a civil court procedure, MPAA v. Citizen, not by the police.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
"I'm not from the US so perhaps someone could explain to me why the "land of the free" has the largest prison population on the planet?"
We have many very backward, uneducated and education-averse people who literally cannot handle freedom.
Even the well-behaved citzens are often religious simpletons who don't make for enlightened social policy and perpetuate wasteful programs like the War on Some Drugs instead of adopting the Portuguese model.
Since we do not protect our borders, we maintain a vast number of imported poor people in addition to the domestic sort. The Industrial Revolution is dead and we don't have the manual labor market to employ people who don't know how to do anything. It is Politically Incorrect to point this out, because populist ideals exclude blaming the backward "public" and only allow blaming "leaders".
The flip side of diversity is that diverse groups have nothing in common and thus no incentive to accept common social mores. As the US became less "European" in demographic the crime rate skyrocketed.
We don't have a large enough prison system. Our criminals love crime (demonstrated by gangsta boasting in the media) and perpetuate subcultures that love crime. They are willfully beyond redemption.
Many Americans aren't sophisticated enough to handle freedom, and they idealize other simple people and simple idiotic ideas instead of treating them with the contempt they deserve. For the civilized Americans to maintain any sort of security will require an ever-more-restrictive police state. The public are not self-aware and will never change.
Fortunately we have the Second Amendment, because it at least gives us the power to shoot back.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."