Senate Unanimously Passes Anti-Camcorder Bill 637
jamonterrell writes "The US Senate just unanimously passed a bill allowing the criminal prosecution of recording movies with a camcorder in theatres. Victims of the new bill would face 3 years in prison on first offense (5 if it was done for profit), repeat offenders would get 10 years. As a side note, it will cost taxpayers an additional 5 million dollars per year through 2009 for enforcement." Several states have made recording in theaters a crime, although none of them have penalties nearly as harsh as this Senate bill.
Surely this is a civil, not a criminal matter... (Score:2, Insightful)
You'd get less time... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not standing up for the crime, but isn't the punishment supposed to match it?
Sickening...
Why should taypayers pay for enforcement? (Score:5, Insightful)
But why on earth should taypayers have to pay for enforcement of these rules?
If preventing camcorders is movie theaters is so important to their business, they should pay for the cost of preventing it. Anything else is a form of subsidy of the music industry. Taypayer money should be spend on protecting the security of people. Subsidies (in any form) are justified only if an industry which is important for providing necessities of life to the population is otherwise likely to suffer significant harm. In this case, there is no justification: The movie industry does not provide any necessities, just luxerious. Also, the movie industry would be quite capable of paying the costs of enforcing the rules they asked for. By paying for enforcement of this rule, Senate intends to rob the poor (taypayers) and giev to the rich (movie industry).
Demand (Score:5, Insightful)
Solution: offer movies-on-demand at the same time they play in theaters.
Why miss out on profits from those that download these bootleg movies or buy them off the street? They could offer the movies for $4 a pop and people would buy.
I can't wait for an iTunes for movies.
I don't necessarily disagree with the intent but.. (Score:3, Insightful)
If I broke out my cell phone video recorder and took a quick clip of a movie, does that warrant 3 years in prison?
How many... (Score:2, Insightful)
How many years would I get if I physically broke into the theatre and started attacking the manager with a baseball bat? Less then 10 years I assure you.
What Country are YOU living in? (Score:5, Insightful)
Pirating films isn't white-collar enough to warrant a light sentence. The only crimes that have stiff sentences are the ones that wealthy people don't commit.
Considering (Score:4, Insightful)
oh well (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Why should taypayers pay for enforcement? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What Country are YOU living in? (Score:5, Insightful)
We're a bit behind the times down here. I can't think of any recent examples of a local company using it's financial power to put draconian laws into affect. Give us another six months or so to catch up on that one.
Hopefully we'll tear up and burn that Fraud Trade Agreement Bush "offered" us, and we won't have to worry about it any time soon either.
Re:You'd get less time... (Score:5, Insightful)
There is real, measurable damage when some clown in a business suit robs someone of their retirement fund. They destroy lives. I'm yet to see a poor starving industry executive begging me for money when I buy my groceries because some kid downloaded a copy of "Crossroads".
"Well, movie pirates likewise cause millions in economic damage."
If I hadn't been able to download a few episodes of The Sopranos, I never would have bought the entire DVD collection. Viewing times just don't suit my work habits unfortunately, and I'm not abou to shell out $100 on something that might just be garbage.
But wait, you're talking about those poor unfortunate people like set builders and painters, the hard workers who make their living supporting the movie industry, and I'm hurting them, right?
If that's the case, they'd have a big complaint to lodge with those behind Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow. The whole movie filmed without a single set being built, everything CG apart from the main actors.
The movie industry is playing catch-up to consumer demands. They either adapt, of their business model dies.
Is it really that hard to grasp?
Touch of bias in the article (Score:2, Insightful)
There are other reasons. In some countries, it hasn't even been released yet! And when it is released it's going to be dubbed. I don't think it's too tightfisted to not want to buy an airline ticket to another country just to see the film in the correct language.
And why is this suddenly a problem? You've been able to get pirate videos since the 1980's. Exactly the same thing - recorded on a camcorder. The only difference is that the distribution method has changed. Changed to one that doesn't actually make the copiers any money!
Re:Why should taypayers pay for enforcement? (Score:4, Insightful)
$5 million is a tiny, tiny fraction of the amount of tax revenue the entire movie industry (studios, distributors, cinemas, actors, crew, etc.) bring in annually. In short, by paying their taxes, the film industry is in fact paying for the enforcement of these laws. The "why should taxpayers pay?" line is so broken, you really go and do some very, very basic study of economics.
Re:You'd get less time... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not standing up for the crime, but isn't the punishment supposed to match it?
Great analogy, except that you're comparing the ACTUAL time you would probably get for a crime to the MAXIMUM time you could get for another crime. The MAXIMUM punishment for felony aggravated assault and felony robbery would probably be about 30+ years, depending on the state. Why do people on slashdot have such trouble comprehending maximum punishment? Go look at some laws. Most crimes have suprisingly high maximum punishents. Most people don't get the maximum. That's why it's called a maximum punishment, not a standard punishemnt.
Re:Augh what the HELL?! (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course a counter argument is that we can play that game as well by paying off senators to help us instead of big business, but I'm sure big business has deeper pockets from which to give. Deep pockets that we as consumers give them. I'm sure there are controls on the size of "donations" but it creates an inherent conflict of interest that, in my opinion, shouldn't be tolerated.
Now label me as a troll and move along.
Re:You'd get less time... (Score:5, Insightful)
They do. But this law would give you up to three years in prison even if you don't do it for profit. While many people stealing movies for personal use may collectively cause millions in economic damage, individually you have only cost a few bucks. So the punishment should fit the crime, that is, it should only be worth a few bucks, not millions.
If somebody pirates a movie for profit and makes millions themselves, I can see this argument holding and requiring a stiff sentence. But for individual pirates stealing for personal use, it's just insane.
Re:I don't necessarily disagree with the intent bu (Score:2, Insightful)
Just wait until they make the logical extension. Filming a movie with a camcorder is no different than copying a CD or video. No different at all.
3 years federal time, buddy.
Distributing it will get you, oh, two more.
Oh, by the way, Federal laws already have redefined "profit" as possession, since you "profited" by not having to buy the item in question, so it's impossible not to profit from it by those laws. They just need to notice that they've already done that elsewhere and move it over.
KFG
Re:You'd get less time... (Score:3, Insightful)
Someone steals $500 from a convenience store, they're not going to go down for 30 years. They'll get a few months and then maybe 12 months of probation.
Sitting in a cinema with a camcorder should not be punishable by any prison time. It is not a violent act, it makes nobody rich, it isn't going to fund any drug cartel. It is a simple civil violation, not something comitted by a criminal mastermind or a thug with a weapon.
I stand by my original comment.
Re:Why should taypayers pay for enforcement? (Score:2, Insightful)
There's a strong case for protecting property and it seems Slashdot readers believe intellectual property should be free as it is in places like Thailand or China where enforcement is lax or nonexistent.
There's no instrinsic right to steal the property of others whether it be tangible like grandma's life savings or the intellectual property of powerful media conglomerates. A free market allows selllers to set the price of their merchandise or services. As movies are not a life necessity like food, housing, medicine, or housing, I don't see that media companies can be accused of overcharging for entertainment. This issue has nothing to do with the home taping act or unreasonably long copyright protections. This is plain theft.
Re:What Country are YOU living in? (Score:5, Insightful)
Huh, that's funny. I'd have sworn Dennis Koslowski [nydailynews.com] is accused not only of looting his own company, but tax evasion in the millions as well -- and various conspiracies to cover up his alleged crimes.
Not to mention the allegations against Ken Lay and the other alleged Enron conspirators : not only are they alleged to have conned their own investors, they are also alleged to have manufactured fake power shortages in order to over-charge California, according to seized tapes: [cbsnews.com]
But even if you were correct in claiming that "white collar criminals tend to only commit one crime", if that single crime nets the criminal millions of dollars, well, those ill-gotten gains will last a lifetime longer than the take from knocking over a liqueur store.
I'm sure that if by robbing a liqueur store you could make millions, the hold up men would be happy to retire afterward -- or be driven out of thievery by competition from greedy MBAs.
But tell me one thing: why are you so willing to be sympathetic to those who steal the investments of pensioners and pension plans in order to live it up yachting on the Riviera, and so unsympathetic to the poor junkie from the projects who just wants to steal enough to get by for one more miserable day?
Why do we allow the wealthy to bend us over and rob us, and then fawn all over them at their parole parties? Why do we beleive that a CEO really "earns" a salary plus benefits in the tens of millions of dollars, while the average worker gets his jib outsourced?
Is it because we respect wealth -- earned or stolen -- so much, or just because we respect ourselves so little?
Is this still the country that Jefferson and the Adamses risked their "lives, fortunes, and scared honors" for, or some European-style feudalism with the thieving rich taking the place of an idle aristocracy?
Re:You'd get less time... (Score:2, Insightful)
Sigh. Would it be too much to ask you to think for one minute before posting? What the hell do you think 'retirement funds' invest in? That's right - for profit businesses! So when you hurt for-profit companies, you hurt the poor old people with the retirement funds AND ultimately the set painters and whatever other lovable tramp characters you want to put in your menagerie.
The "Adapt or your business model dies" argument of yours in this case is bullshit. There is a difference between a real technological shift and new methods of crime. The existence of bricks don't obsolete car windows or cause us to scream about how the car window manufacturers need to come up with new brick-resistant windows or go out of business. Rather, we say "find the idiots who are throwing bricks through windows." Movies have kept up with technological shifts in moviemaking quite well. But piracy is still piracy, even if you try to excuse it as "some kid downloading a copy of crossroads." at the end of the day, IN AGGREGATE, that kid IS hurting your hypothetical retirement fund.
Another example of corrupt politicians (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:You'd get less time... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What Country are YOU living in? (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought you could only be punished for crimes you have been charged for and found guilty of having commit. Not for crimes you may have done or are likely to do.
Re:Why should taypayers pay for enforcement? (Score:3, Insightful)
I had written: "Taypayer money should be spend on protecting the security of people." This includes enforcing laws against murder and robbery.
Enforcing a rule against camcorders is like enforcing other kinds of NDAs. Whether or not you think that NDAs are morally acceptable, it's not right to use taxpayer money on enforcing them.
MancDiceman continued: $5 million is a tiny, tiny fraction of the amount of tax revenue the entire movie industry (studios, distributors, cinemas, actors, crew, etc.) bring in annually. In short, by paying their taxes, the film industry is in fact paying for the enforcement of these laws.
If a subsidy takes the form of a tax rebate, it's still a subsidy. And, do you really think that it's right when taxpayer money is spent on camcorder rule enforcement but not on GPL enforcement just because currently the movie industry pays more taxes than the Free Software industry? Either is a subsidy by nature, and where subsidies go should be decided on a basis of where they're needed and not on a basis of who pays more taxes. (I don't want to ask for subsidies for the Free Software industry, I don't think that such subsidies are needed - just give us a level playing field without unfair advantages for proprietary software companies, and we'll do very well. However I think it's clear that subsidies for the movie industry are much less justifiable.)
Hell, steal the reel! (Score:4, Insightful)
A law aimed at the poorest in society (Score:3, Insightful)
This horrible law is targeted at the urban poor. It is poor urban dwellers who are the prime "offenders". This demographic already suffers a hideously high rate of incarceration, even for non-violent "crimes" like this. The urban poor are the only audience who would tolerate the low quality, shaky pictures, and muffled sound. Dolby 5.1? Not hardly. These videos aren't finding their way into the $30K home theaters of Malibu and the Hamptons.
I guess it doesn't matter to Jack Valenti and Barbara Streisand. Hey they've got to pay for their botox and Hummer SUVs. What's it matter if another nigga or two is locked away for a few years?
it doesnt just happen in america (Score:3, Insightful)
still leaks happen most commonly in the far east (when they are sent off for screenings and translations), ive seen untold numbers of cam and telesyncs from the far east.
this really wont stop piracy at all, its just another thing thats making america even more of a police state.
21st Century Law (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"I need to get out of here" (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Changing the meaning of "patriot" to someone who is behind his government no matter what.
2) Changing the definition of "democracy" to "the lesser of two evils"
3) Changing the meaning of any political group to be derogatory.
4) Labeling anyone who speaks out against the government to be either a traitor or freedom hating commie bastard (this relates to #1)
Of course, I'm just a godless freedom hating commie bastard from Denmark of all places - hell, I'm even a member of the [warning for the faint of heart] Social Democrats AND I'm an atheis, so that absolutely PROVES that I'm a freedom hating godless commie bastard. Oh, and since I don't agree with your governments politics, and can really only stand Colin Powel, I hate America too.
Re:You'd get less time... (Score:3, Insightful)
If somebody pirates a movie for profit and makes millions themselves, I can see this argument holding and requiring a stiff sentence. But for individual pirates stealing for personal use, it's just insane.
Copying isn't stealing. How many times that has to be told. Don't fall into the rhetoric of big media companies twisting the terms to make breaking the copyright law which allows a limited monopoly on copying "their" content morally equal to stealing. Illegal copying is something between stealing and "just copying, no harm". But it isn't stealing. Can't you use neutral terms in texts dealing with copyright instead of those made by the media companies?
Wishes and dreams... (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a huge problem when white-collar crimes are more vigorously prosecuted and receive proportionally tougher penalties than violent crimes. It just goes to show how much influence corporations have on our government. This is why we NEED campaign finance reform. This is why we NEED to get rid of soft money alltogether. ALL soft money. This is why we NEED to get rid of PACs - so daughters like mine can have justice instead of (or possibly in addition to) a lifetime of therapy.
Re:Not likely. (Score:1, Insightful)
Tell me how on earth you expect them to "crack the DVD" when it hasn't even hit the cinema's yet? The occasional DVD screener, yes. But most have a telecine or cam rip first.
This law will stop nothing. What they're doing is already illegal.
Re:Augh what the HELL?! (Score:3, Insightful)
What kind of a country sentences someone to get ass raped anyway? Western civilization should be ashamed of itself.
Ayn Rand quote (Score:5, Insightful)
"Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed? We want them broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against . .
Atlas Shrugged
Re:That's interesting. (Score:4, Insightful)
So theoretically, would this make it worth your while to kill anyone who noticed you using the camcorder, if there was, say, a 60% chance that killing them allowed you to successfully escape? There must be some probability threshold before a "manslaughter-equivalent" jail sentance for videoing makes it worth your while to do bad things if you get caught...
How does the person sitting next to you in the cinema feel about this, compared to say, the managing director of the company who invested in the film?
Re:What Country are YOU living in? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this still the country that Jefferson and the Adamses risked their "lives, fortunes, and scared honors" for, or some European-style feudalism with the thieving rich taking the place of an idle aristocracy?
Seriously, how do you think the European aristocracy came into being? It was rich and wealthy merchants using their money and power to buy themselves rights and more power. America is not a classless society, it just defines its classes differently. Your powerful families are growing just as they did in Europe hundreds of years ago - basically same system, different part of the curve.
Re:Surely this is a civil, not a criminal matter.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What Country are YOU living in? (Score:3, Insightful)
See recent US activities in
Re:What about.... (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't know many people then. I see films all the time when I go on holiday. I generally have my camera with me. I travel by train, so I have no car to leave my camera in, and I stay in youth hostels, so leaving expensive equipment in the room is as good as leaving them on a table in a fast-food restaurant with a sign that says "STEAL ME".
So I will be taking my camera into cinemas for the forseeable future.
Re:You'd get less time... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a wonderful analogy. The recording industry wants to outlaw the bricks themselves (i.e. P2P). Then we couldn't use them to build houses and pave driveways (share noninfringing files).
Rome (Score:5, Insightful)
Laws and crimes and what gets emphasized are entirely random now. for instance, we have multi millions of illegal immigrants. People who jump the border have committed a felony, yet it is almost universally ignored, they are allowed to live freely almost anyplace inside the US. At best if they find a huge group of them near the border they'll just be shipped back over, they rarely serve any jail time. We also have laws that make hiring an illegal immigrant a federal crime, with a 10,000$ fine per incident, but you never hear much of any arrests in those cases, even though the practice is blatant.
There's more, that's just a blatant example. Law enforcement is political, it's not any sort of even or fair, it's whatever the elite class wants that season. They give the orders, their enforcers click heels and jump to it. If they are ordered to ignore certain crimes, they will do so, even if they are aware of them.
I am not pro criminal, I just think the laws are terribly skewed and not enforced fairly across the board, and we have a variety of laws on the books now that are just ridiculous and shouldn't even be there. The US has a growth industry of gradually adding to laws that make more of the lower and middle classes "criminals". I think it's planned that way, to make a two class society eventually, technofeudalism. They are also apparently destroying as much of the middle class job structure as they can. Any job they can find that is exportable they will, any job that they can't exported they will import millions of illegals or too many legals to take those jobs. It's so completely obvious I won't even debate it with any debunkers now, the stats and realities are all over. It's been slow but verifiably steady, and the numbers increase yearly. Part of the plan, command and control, the same old dodge the old aristocrats have always pulled down through the ages.
As to recording in the cinema? I could care less, I've been boycotting movies for awhile now, and paid for music, I just quit. If a movie is free to copy, I might buy it. I have two here I got that the producer lets people make copies of. Music, again, if it's free over the radio by putting up with ads I occassionaly listen, but besides that, don't buy any-new. Used I will buy, it's just recycled, and the producers don't make another penny on it, but some guy at a yard sale will so I don't care, but even then not too much, a few examples of each a year. I even quit buying from the new but marked down bins, stopped that last year.
I think if enough people will stop placing so much importance on "entertainmnerts" of that sort, we'll see more sane pricing and reduce any demand for copying for profit. it's all I can do, tell people to boycott movies and music and professional sports and television fiction. it's gotten so ridiculous expensive it's stupid, and the time wasting aspects of it are lost to the wasters, I think in a lot of cases they don't realise how absuerdly addicted they get to it to the detriment of other more important things our society ignores too much. When you can get several million people in one weekend to go drop tens of millions of dollars all over the country to watch some new movie, with thousands in any random city you pick, and the same city can't get two dozen people to a community meeting to discuss local judicial corruption or the next multi million dollar school budget, etc, well, there's something wrong there in *general terms*. IMO anyway.
Rome when it was collapsing had it's bread and circuses to keep the people amused and occupied so they wouldn't pay attention to the rot that was collapsing their society around them.. We have the same thing now but people don't like to think they are droned out barbarians addicted to bre
Re:You'd get less time... (Score:1, Insightful)
You're completely ignoring the parent's first point: If I hadn't been able to download a few episodes of The Sopranos, I never would have bought the entire DVD collection
Piracy is paradoxical in that it hurts, but it also helps. It's hard to determine whether in aggregate the effect is positive, negative, or nuetral. Some argue that piracy killed the Dreamcast, while others say it propelled the Playstation to the top. I'd say it's a wash and everybody's making a big deal out of nothing.
On the other hand, the suit who robs the pension fund has caused harm, no question about it. These are the type of greedy bastards behind this kind of law, and when they get caught robbing the pension fund, they typically pay a fine equivelent to around 10% of what they stole -- and no jail time in most cases. Can you imagine their outrage if people convicted of piracy were routinely fined 10% of the value of what they were caught with?
Re:You'd get less time... (Score:4, Insightful)
For example at sporting events certain behaviors are prohibited. The emphasized punishment for the behavior is ejection from the venue. If the action is a crime, the event may press charges. Most events that I have attended do not say that all prohibited action will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. The reason, I believe, is because such statement might encourage suspects to be more resistant to the punishment, an in the process put innocent people at risk. For example, one can imagine some object accidently getting thrown onto the court. This obviously put player health at risk, and arguable could be the basis for a criminal prosecution. If the suspects thought that jail time was a real possibility, then they might choose to use violence to defend themselves, as the jail time might not be significantly increased. As it is, they have an incentive to leave quietly to avoid further punishment.
And this is what the theaters are missing. By attaching a five year penalty to a nonviolent action, they are endangering my health, the health of staff, and the well being of any police called to enforce the action. I mean is someone who is risking five years for recording a movie going to worry about 10 years for injuring the people around him in his attempt to avoid capture? Is such a person going to worry about the riot he or she causes as they pull a gun to try to escape? I know that this is the extreme possibility, but one must make a full analysis before passing these laws.
People will do really stupid stuff out of fear. In the US we try hard to have a fair and open process of law to minimize that fear. The problem is that process is becoming less fair, for instance by the reduced access to proper representation for those who cannot afford it, and as a consequence these parties tend to feel they have less to lose, which makes them more a threat to society.
MPAA - alternate What If solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Wouldn't it be interesting if a different boycott could be arranged - one where instead of everyone saying 'don't buy music, don't movies', we just say - for one good movie - Don't record it? Do not let it hit the internet? Not one little copy? If we look back at the Matrix, Spiderman, et al., these were heavily taped and found online, only to have their ticket sales soar into the hundreds of millions. So many here could claim, 'See, it didn't hurt at all - it probably helped as advertising.' It is an argument that I agree with, that the people who take the time to hunt for and download a grainy copy are those who are the movies biggest fans anyway, and they just can't wait to see it. It won't stop them from going to the movie, buying the DVD - they just want to get their hands on all of it.
Soooo - what if? Let's take Spiderman2 about to come out soon. I suppose to prove a theory one way or the other, something needs to give. Otherwise it remains theory. So imagine if not one copy of Spiderman2 were released online? And what if, instead of a blockbuster, the movie only produced a lackluster performance? That could add fuel to the argument that the pre-recording really was helping after all, and the MPAA just shot themselves in foot - again. If sales are about the same, it could prove that the pre-recording didn't make a difference. Does the MPAA really think that they could have earned more than the 300 to 500 million some of these movies make? I know that there are many holes in my idea, and it would be almost impossible to pull together a united, worldwide 'freeze-frame' event. But still, it makes me wonder - what if?
Re:That's interesting. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bill text (Score:3, Insightful)
Vote the Bastards Out! (Score:1, Insightful)
Remember the name John Cornyn, he's the whore that sponsored this bill for the movie industry.
Re:* "Victims of this new bill" * (Score:5, Insightful)
*cough* BULLSHIT *cough*
The problem with this law is that it adds criminal penalties for what was formerly a civil offense. The civil penalties were in line with severity of a crime. This law has mandatory 10-year penalties for repeat offenders - those that have already spent 10-20 years in prison under this law.
That's more than serial rapists, murderers, or people who embezzle billions. That's more than most drug-related crime laws.
The problem isn't the enforcement but, rather, that the penalty is hideously out of whack with the severity of the crime.
Re:Wishes and dreams... (Score:3, Insightful)
-Restil
Re:Bill text (Score:1, Insightful)
What is it then? (Score:2, Insightful)
I think the penalties in this bill are a bit harsh, but I'm really sick of this 'I want it for free' mentality.
Go ahead and mod me down
Re:Bill text (Score:5, Insightful)
If Congress doesn't read it before voting on it, why should we?
*grumble*
Re:You'd get less time... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You'd get less time... (Score:2, Insightful)
It involves taking something that someone else has a property right in. That's stealing. It is irrelevant that the property right is an abstract one created by law.
Re:Name one person. (Score:3, Insightful)
While I won't usually cite USA Today as a source, the myth of the "Club Fed" prisons is just that: a myth.
They're certainly not as dank or dangerous as a maximum security state prison, but they're not country clubs, either.
USA Today article, RE: Martha Stewart and what she faces in prison [usatoday.com]
Similar article from Globe and Mail [theglobeandmail.com]
Article from Australia's The Age regarding white collar criminals in the US [theage.com.au]
-l
Re:Not likely. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, you don't have the right to do all that nonsense in someone else's house. The only reason you have the right to do it at home is because a lot of fair use is just a reasonable expectation of privacy. We make fair use because we don't want companies coming into our homes and determining our activities. A movie theatre is a public place and there is no such expectation.
Also, when you pay your $10 at the theatre...that $10 is for the right to sit in the theatre and watch whatever the theatre decides to display and at their convenience, not yours. Your $10 is not to purchase a copy of a film, it is for a one time viewing of said film.
There is no possible way you can justify making videotaping first run movies in the theatre legal. Way too over the top utopian socialist viewpoint. If you don't allow companies to at least establish cursory protection of their property...they won't produce it for you to steal. I'm not suggesting we allow them into our homes, but likewise, you shouldn't be able to go into their house and steal their product.
If the EFF were to "fight" this law, they'd be fighting for it. For the right for an individual or a corporation to prevent others from videotaping on private property. Otherwise, when you become Maddonna/Esther, the paparazzi could legally come onto your property to videotape you eating dinner.
Re:Not likely. (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that it is not true. The creator has a time-limited monopoly. Aren't many of the most famous paintings in the public domain?
Re:Not likely. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Not likely. (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe because flash photography can degrade a painting.
Robocop would be illegal (Score:3, Insightful)
What happens when there are cyborgs walking around recording everything they see?
"His memory is admissible in court"
Re: faking filming.... (Score:3, Insightful)
The thing that bothers me most about this law is the way the movie industry has twisted govt's arm to protect their business interests at the taxpayer's expense. If I carry a camcorder into a theater and start filming a movie I *paid* to see in the first place, it's just as much a "victimless crime" as if I placed a few "illegal bets" on a sports event, or sat at home and smoked a joint, or you name it.... I guess the Senate still hasn't grasped the idea that prosecuting victimless crimes isn't effective and just wastes money.
Re:Surely this is a civil, not a criminal matter.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Bill text (Score:4, Insightful)
'Course, something like this could never come to pass--it'd be used for filibuster tactics, how do you define "reasonable", who determines what's an acceptable answer, etc. But it's a scary thought-experiment to realize that something like this would drastically change the face of Congress.
What about the borg and the handicapped? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't suppose anyone is going to come up with an argument saying that they are in the theaters with their camcorders excersizing their right to time shift...
You lose that bet.
A camcorder can be assistive technology. Keeping them out of the movie theater can be as unethical as turning away people with seeing eye dogs or wheelchairs.
There are quite valid reasons for having and/or using a camcorder or similar device in a theater.
If you think time cannot be as big a barrier as space, I propose you undertake the following consciousness raising experiment. Divide into three groups. One group has to ride around in a wheel chair for a month. One group can only go outside the house or watch live tv or use the phone between the hours of 10PM and 6AM for the same month. The third group has no constraints on temporal or spacial mobility. Keep track of what each group was able to do and not do during the course of the month. And each group should try to excercise a broad range of activities. Go to a movie, rent a movie, rent a car, eat a decent meal out (late night bar food and fast food does NOT count), ride public transportation, enter a tournament, go to a hobby related club meeting, go to a park (most close at dark), go to the doctor, go call a friend on the phone, go to the library, go to a book store, go work out at the gym, go to the local health food store, go visit a juice bar, go buy groceries, go to a bar/nightclub, rent a canoe or tube, visit a saladbar, go for a hike in the woods, take a class, go to a live game, go see live theater, go rent a motel room (hint: you will be charged for two days if you sleep past noon), go talk to your bank manager, and try holding a decent job. Unless you live in the city that never sleeps, you are likely to find that those with the temporal constraints are as restricted as those with spacial constraints and face MUCH greater discrimation from businesses and government agencies. On the list above only two: bar/nightclub and non-healthfood grocery shopping are really workable. The person in the wheelchair won't be able to go on a hike but they can go to the park or canoeing/tubing. I am certainly not trying to downplay the hardships faced by the physical handicaps, but our society has come a long way in accomodating their needs compared to time related needs. And, to add insult to injury, try consulting with medical people about a sleep disability: "Thank you for calling the Sleep Center at the University of Virginia. Our office hours are from 9AM to 5PM, monday through friday."
Should handicapped people be forced to wait until a movie comes out on DVD and not be even further cut off socially from other people because they can't discuss movies while they are still a hot topic? And speaking of which, why the hell don't they project subtitles underneath the movies or transmit them via 802.11 to portable receivers (which you could borrow if you weren't one of the borg.)
"Wanna watch a movie together?" "Yes, but, honey, we live 500 miles apart?" "True, but we have high speed net access". People today form or maintain social and even romantic relation
Re:You'd get less time... (Score:3, Insightful)
A final note, this bill can change as it goes through the House and back for conference (assuming the House passes a modified version) and before final passage for Presidential signing. *YOU* can make a difference by writing your congressional representatives or perhaps those running against the incumbent of your district in the upcoming elections. Register to vote so you have power. Contribute to campaigns representing your stances on the issues you care about. Involve yourself, no one else can do it for you.
Re:* "Victims of this new bill" * (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, "we" strongly believe in copyright enforcement ("we" in the reasonable-headed group of
I seriously doubt that many here really think that jail time is appropriate punishment for the lazy coder at some corporation who inserted a module from GPL'ed sources to save himself some work. Or even for the management at said corporation who encouraged the practice to reduce development costs. Yet that is what we have for the copiers of "IP" belonging to big media.
if the best way you can think of 'dealing' is to cry wolf about how people without respect for others property are 'victims'
The best way to deal with this offence is in line with deed done: financially. Charging the offender for actual damages (likely about $20) plus appropriate punitive damages (a couple thousand at most) is the sane way to deal with this "crime". Taking a violation of civil law and making the punishment a criminal offence, with such rediculously small impact (please show me a credible study that proves any financial losses from shitty camcorder movies), is just stupid.
Summary of why this sucks (Score:3, Insightful)
As usual we have the vocal comments from the "Record it eslewhere" crew and from the "But it's illegal, so why are you whining" collective. Both sides, as usual, seem to be missing the point.
Some people have touched on the real issues, but neither side (especially the "it's illegal!" side) seem to even notice the points.
1 - It's overkill
I think that in-cinema recording is wrong (though the over-the-top messages before movies make me want to do so out of spite, I admit). You bring in a camcorder to use in a film and there are very few things other than bootlegging that you can be doing. So I'm not disagreeing that it's illegal.
But come on here. This is walnut-with-a-sledgehammer territory. It's not a criminal offence - or shouldn't be. Hefty fine. Confiscation of equipment. Barred from cinemas. These would be acceptable - and actually stop repeat attempts. But prison-time? Yeah, great. Obligatory "bubba" gags aside, prison is usually a good place to pick up real skills and contacts.
2 - It's not the cause of the problem
As people keep saying, it's not camjobs that are doing the rounds and eating into postential ticket-sales. If anything is, it's be the high-quality Telesyncs that people keep on referring to here. It ain't punters-with-a-cam, it's cinema-workers with some "slightly better" kit.
Adding the two together, they're basically giving a vastly OTT punishment to the people who aren't even the main cause of bootlegging. And the cost of which will be passed onto the US taxpayer, and probably reflected in box-office prices too.
Honestly, they're probably losing more money (and customers) to trying to stamp out bootlegs than they do to the actual bootlegs.
TiggsRe:Not likely. (Score:1, Insightful)
But in a theater you didn't buy a license to own a copy of it, you purchased the right to view it ONE time in the theater. You didn't purchase a reel of film to take home, you purchased permission to sit in a room with nice seats and good sound (hopefully... if you don't live here at least) to see the movie on this huge screen. You haven't purchased anything except permission to watch it with your own one or two eyes (depending on how many still work).
You have no rights whatsoever beyond being allowed to watch that film assuming you do not violate the rules of the theater. Since the theater sets the rules that means no smoking, yelling, outside food, or camcorders.
Because a theater is PRIVATE property they can do whatever they hell they want to you as long as it doesn't violate any criminal law. You are at thier mercy as to what you can and cannot do.
All this law does is say there are now criminal penalties for violating this rule of the theaters, like there already is for crying "fire" in a theater!.
Punishment does NOT match crime. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: faking filming.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Your story is simple: You think that the law is a travesty, and that it allows idiot theater managers to physically detain people at risk to everyone concerned, just because they might *suspect* that filming is occurring, and that your perfectly peaceful, legal, and harmless act of holding up a piece of cardboard demonstrates that fact.
Re: faking filming.... (Score:3, Insightful)
The reasonable presumption is that you or someone else is going to see what you recorded, and that person would otherwise be paying to see the movie (perhaps not for the first time.) That is where the damage comes in, and the activity is no longer victimless. There's an issue of practicality from the standpoint of law enforcement here. Although the actual loss is primarily brought about by viewing the illegally obtained video, the viewing usually occurs in private and cannot be proven without violating the property rights of the owner of the property where the viewing takes place. But because there is no reasonable legal use for the recording, that is where the law can focus.
The use of logic and reasonable expectations is not foreign to the legal system.
Re:Not only will this make CAM recordings more rar (Score:2, Insightful)
This is an understatement. Jail time for what? Dubbing an extremely shitty copy of the movie that you probably wouldn't watch if you couldn't download it? Where is the "loss" involved? You likely wouldn't have downloaded if you really liked it, and probably only "cammed" it for a friend who wasn't sure they'd like it at all.
Next we'll be cutting your hand off if you stole a piece of candy at the grocery store (even accidentally) and handing out the cane lashes.
These aren't hallmarks of a good society, they are indicators of an oppressive form of government where the well-being of its citizens matters less than the well-being of the corporations and the system used to keep them down.
I wouldn't take a bullet for Halliburton, and that's what you're doing if you join the army now. And before you get all patriotic, remember how many americans got fired this year due to american corporation offshoring. I'm very patriotic and loyal to my fellow americans, but I will not look the other way when we are being raped by our system.
-Mind
Absolutely Absurd (Score:3, Insightful)
The way I read it was they werent paying for the cursory protection.
All this bill does is manufactures criminals.
If the MPAA is so damned concerned about this, they need to pay to have metal detectors put up and gaurds posted at all entrances and exits. Then no crime can be commited or criminal created in the first place. Yes of course people will still get through the "defenses" but then maybe they need to spend more money protecting their investment with better security.
Ya, its gunna suck to have to get frisked/metal-detected/interrogated to watch a movie.
Less people will go to the movies and they will have to balance their security spending against the publics opinion of the security.
This will also force them to get a clue about the actual statistics of how many people actually do this, how many do it for profit, and how much money they actually lose, which in my opinion is $0.00.
And most importantly, the taxpayers wont have to shell out their hard earned money to protect the business model of a few greedy entertainment CEO's to the detriment of free speech and everything this country stands for!
The problem here is not that so many people are doing this, but that it only takes one occurence to widely distribute the work. This new found technology the Internet has amplified the contradiction between speech and copyright. We can forget our beliefs of this country and keep the current copyright system or we can do a major overhaul to it or maybe even eliminate it all together.
Re:Bill text (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not only will this make CAM recordings more rar (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Bill text (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That's interesting. (Score:2, Insightful)
Making tougher laws because the weaker ones aren't being enforced is just plain stupid. Just because you can't think of a reason this law shouldn't be passed, doesn't mean it should be.
A good rule of thumb when making a decision on something like this is to look at the consequences of not doing it. In this case they would have to fall back to existing copyright laws. Another way to evaluate it is to try to see what it makes illegal that wasn't before. If it was illegal before it didn't need a new law.
Re:A nation of criminals (Score:3, Insightful)