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Ohio Prison Shows Pirated Movies To Inmates
An anonymous reader writes "Richard Humphrey was sentenced to 29 months in prison for selling pirated copies of movies through the subscription-based USAWAREZ.com. He was later sent to the Lorain County prison in February for a parole violation and while he was a prisoner, he says guards showed inmates Ride Along and The Wolf of Wall Street before they were released on DVD. A spokesperson for Lorain County Correctional Institution Warden Kimberly Clipper said prison officials are aware that pirated movies are being shown to prisoners and the issue is being investigated. But she said she couldn't comment further because the investigation is ongoing."
Is The Wolf of Wall Street the kind of movie you should be showing prisoners anyways?
Prisons break laws constantly, they are expected to violate rights, violate laws, etc... they are there only for punishing poor people.
Show me millionaires that are in prison that go to general population prison.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
They should show them pirated pirate movies.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
as some of you know, i've spent time in the florida prison system...this stuff is SOP...prisons are basically just the streets with much higher prices.
imo, its great that inmates get to watch illegal movies, brought in the guards, while smoking their illegal weed, often brought in by the guards (and of course through other less...sanitary? ways), while talking on their illegal cell phones, often brought in by...well, you already know.
it's all mostly a big game...now i'm not saying people don't belong in prison, lord knows i've met plenty who do, but a dude running a pirate movie site?
not really, imho at least.
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
If it is a for profit prison, this actually would be showing pirated movies for profit.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Can you imagine if you were in jail on copyright infringement charges and the prison you were in was showing pirated movies?
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
Wow; that *is* cruel and unusual punishment.
Well if the prison guards are actually showing pirated movies, it isn't piracy for profit, but it isn't exactly piracy for personal use either.
Given that the prisons in Ohio are privatized, yes anything provided to the inmates would be legally and practically "for profit". Still not sure why they would bother offering them anything but super old DVDs and VHS movies that have been scrapped at the local library, but one thing that comes to mind is a guard curtailed a favor from an inmate in exchange for something recent to watch. It will be interesting to see if the investigation turns anything up.
I don't think that's considered fair use :) It's pretty much illegal. Even if they bought a legal DVD, they're not licensed for public performances.
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
Prison is not suppoed to be torture. Why not let them kick back and watch a movie? If you give them nothing to do, they will think up their own entertainment and it might not be good.
I'm guessing those are rated Arrr?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Generally, you are right — the particular prisoner's case is different. However — content-owners have tried to make "non-profit" infringers (people making copyrighted material available for free to others) into examples by suing them for large sums of money (though no jail-time).
And second, the prison officials aren't just watching the material themselves — they are showing it to a large number of people (entire prison population). This is something, which you can not legally do even with a DVD you purchased in a store — they are only licensed for private viewing.
They should be busted and, ideally, someone ought to end up in the cell next to the protagonist — even if for a shorter sentence.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
This can be blamed on the throttling of Netflix.
I've wondered why we don't allow prisoners to play some kind of FPS (or ideally MMO) type games in prisons, and let them sort out their turf wars and aggression using that.
-- quite a few MMO players live very similar to convicts, in that they stay isolated in their cell for 20 hours a day.
-- shanking someone in a game would be far better than in real life.
Putting people in a confined space with no outlet and nothing to do for 20 hours a day -- and those who didn't already have violent or criminal tendencies will have them in short order. And the recreation they do find will not be something we want them to be doing.
Except the article says the movies were clearly cam rips.
From TFA:
In some cases, Humphrey said the movies appeared to have been illegally recorded by theater-goers. "You could see people walking in front of the camera," he said.
That's a pretty good sign it's not legit.
The code clearly states that distributions by unauthorized person is a crime. charging is irrelevant.
If I where to print my own copy of Game of thrones, and then give the copies I printed away, I would be in violation
However, the people buying the books would not have violated any current laws.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
They were cammed. According to TFA, you could see members of the audience occasionally blocking the movie.
Prisons break laws constantly, they are expected to violate rights, violate laws, etc... they are there only for punishing poor people.
Show me millionaires that are in prison that go to general population prison.
Um... not quite. Rich people are less likely to go to jail period (because they can afford better lawyers, are targeted less, and less frequently have incentive to commit crimes like bank robbery and burglary that get people caught). You really have to look at rich people who are convicted of burglary and poor people who are convicted of burglary before saying that the jails really just exist to punish the poor.
As for rights, yes, prisons frequently violate rights, but consider the *flipside* of that. In the United States, we make it relatively easy for criminals to *sue* for violation of their rights. So pretty much *every* prison guard, no matter how good or honest, gets sued by prisoners. It's not like prisons are trying to violate rights--they're generally trying to not get sued.
Ask the owner of any bar about people wanting money for "public performance" of copyrighted entertainment.
False. Though all unauthorized distribution is illegal, not all of it constitutes a criminal offense. To make the perpetrator a felon, according to paragraphs; 506 federal Title 17 of the United States Code, the distribution must be committed:
Our protagonist qualifies for the first item above. And so do his current jailers. Small-time non-profit distributors — such as torrent-users, who keep the stuff they just downloaded available, but not for long enough to qualify for the second case — do not.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
This is something, which you can not legally do even with a DVD you purchased in a store — they are only licensed for private viewing.
Although there is wording on DVDs to the effect that they are "licensed", this is not true. If you purchase a copy, you own that copy and retain all first-sale rights.
The actual phrasing in 17 USC concerns "public performance". If these DVDs had been legally purchased (instead of definitely pirated), it's possible the prison performance would not be considered "public". After all, can you just walk in and watch movies with the prisoners? Remember that size of audience is unimportant for determining "private" or "public". A wedding with 500 guests where only people with invitations are allowed in is "private", while a bar with seating for 3 people is "public".
Showing CAM rips?
That's gotta count as cruel and unusual punishment.
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This is interesting... Could you offer a link, where this legal quirk is convincingly explained? Because right now it sounds like one of those "you don't have to pay your income tax" proclamations...
If, indeed, I can do anything I want with the purchased DVD, as you claimed at the beginning, then this part becomes irrelevant, no?
It is possible...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
" It will be interesting to see if the investigation turns anything up."
Don't hold your breath. If anyone remotely powerful is involved the standard tactic is to delay, I mean "investigate", until everyone's attention span has given way.
I think you mean curried... you curry favor, you curtail bad behavior.
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
Just don't show them the pirate movie "cutthroat island" ( http://business.time.com/2012/... .) After all, cruel and unusual punishment is unconstitutional!
That would be ironic, but considering prisons are in many cases taxpayer-supported higher education for turning minor drug offenders into hardened criminals, that's a relatively minor irony.
The fact that the DVDs are sold, not licensed, means that the copyright holder does not have the legal authority to impose extra conditions upon the buyer.
The "public performance" provision, however, is imposed not by the copyright holder but rather by the law itself. That's where the difference lies.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
As I read case 2, you would need 50 people to download from you within 180 days, if you keep your ratios 1:1, that's one download every 3 days, that seems pretty likely for casual use of torrent.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Maybe I shouldn't be mixing broadcasts vs. DVD but aren't there examples of churches, private parties, etc. being told they are infringing when offering to host Super Bowl parties or World Series showings?
The example I am thinking of is here. Is the difference that technically anyone could walk in off the street into a church and watch? Would they have been in the clear if the showed it in a private room in the church and limited invitations to the current congregation only?
I'm not disagreeing with you, I don't know enough to do so, but it seems to me based on the "dick-move" stories I've read over the years that if they* decide they* want to go after you than the legal means to do so is there...
*they - for various definitions of "they" but generally speaking content rights holders...
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
Because the laws are different in other countries, and citing examples from other countries does not refute claims made by someone citing U.S. Code.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
It is possible that the Ohio prison in question got itself listed as a budget theater and was able to get legal copies of those movies between the main theatrical release and the DVD release.
I find that highly unlikely, but it is possible.
Don't have to get listed; just have to give enough money to the distribution companies. If you have your own copy then you can also get a discount - e.g they charge extra to send you a copy to use that you then have to return. How much you pay depends on how well you can haggle the price; can easily be $350 (with DVD) or $700 PER film. Funny thing is, if you try to reach out and cannot get any traction then you've also done your "due diligence" and can just go ahead and show it - been there with Disney licensed Anime films. (We had a budget, wanted to pay them, but couldn't get anyone to stand up and take the money.)
So even if they did do a cam rip (probably bit torrent copy from somewhere), they very well may have had a license to show it.
And, at least in the Anime world, many of the distribution companies will even let you do it for free (e.g Pioneer, RightStuf) if you show all the ads they have on the DVDs and have asked them for permission to do so.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
People go to prison because they did something wrong and have to be removed from society for a while. The best thing a prison can do is "fix" the person so that they can integrate with society again.
You can't fix a person by taking away their humanity. So yes, they should get to watch TV, play video games, read books, have (consensual) sex. A "correctional facility" should do just that: correct a person. In a more perfect world criminals would come out of prison actually loving their fellow man. Or at the least, be able to integrate with society. Anyone coming out of prison should at least come out with GED equivalent. Preferably with some tradeskills too. Basically, if an employer sees that someone was an a correctional facility, they should think "hey this person has at least a basic education and some tradeskills"
That's how you keep them out of trouble and not going back to prison, just because they had to steal since they couldn't get a half decent job.
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
Warden squeals: "eeeeyay! just what I've always wanted! Bubba; you be warden now; punish me"
Requiem for the American Dream
It's not illegal at all for a preschool teacher to show kids a movie...at all...it's done everyday across the country and it'll never be challenged.
I showed National Geographic films all the time when I taught Geography and Current Events.
Showing prisoners films can indeed have as much an "educational" or "scholastic" aspect as showing films to pre-schoolers, and it's wrong to challenge its use. The only reason we're having this discussion (and for my downmod) is that tech-dorks like to show how smart they are by nitpicking and pedantry on legal topics....you don't know what you're talking about legally.
You can surely read the law code, and even copy it into a comment!...but that doesn't mean you understand how the law works *in practice*.
The "code" of a law is absolutely different from "code" in a computer system...all the entirety of human law since the dawn of time has it's ***appilcation*** which is completely up to human interpretation.
In reality, your argument is not convincing and orginates from a self-serving "one-upmanship" mentality
It's Fair Use. It's non-commercial for educational purposes.
Thank you Dave Raggett