Canadian Fined For Videoing Movie In Theatre 382
canadian_right writes "A Calgary man was fined $1,495 and banned from theaters for a year in the first conviction under a new Canadian law making recording a movie in a theater a crime. Until the new law took effect in 2007, prosecutors had to show evidence of distribution to get a conviction; now, recording without permission is sufficient. The Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association was disappointed that jail time was not given." The man was also banned for a year from possessing any video recording equipment, even a video-capable cellphone, outside of his home.
Your Movie Rights Online. (Score:5, Insightful)
Am I going to be the only one who asks the obvious? Why should he be allowed to record the movie?
Is this any surprise? (Score:3, Insightful)
From TFA: he is an unemployed contractor with an aggravating injury that is preventing him from working. It's pretty obvious what he's doing.
I'm not a big fan of either the MPAA or its Canadian cousin, but I don't see this as news. It's not as if they didn't warn you ahead of time that recording a movie within a theater is illegal.
Frankly, the sentence seemed reasonable. FTW, he didn't even get jail time. He should count himself lucky.
Re:Your Movie Rights Online. (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, and I'll reply to myself, because I forgot something... the fine certainly wasn't extreme, the not being allowed to possess video recording equipment outside of his house part is what I consider extreme.
Medical devices (Score:5, Insightful)
Are they going to ban retinal implants [igargoyle.com] for the blind?
Eventually they might produce quality vision that can be recorded (and of course redistributed):
Riight... (Score:5, Insightful)
The house lights were turned on and the movie was shut off and Calgary police arrested him.
I'm sure all their paying customers enjoyed this. Way to encourage honest people to buy your product.
Re:Your Movie Rights Online. (Score:3, Insightful)
Phones will be getting good video (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Your Movie Rights Online. (Score:5, Insightful)
Possibly the judge was trying to draw a hard line under the lesson for the perp and the public, without resorting to jail time -- which would be excessive for a non-violent first-time offense, immediately expensive for the public, and probably long-term expensive for the public and the perp because of the troubles he'll pick up from his time in our overcrowded prisons.
It's an interesting sentence. It'll get more news-report column-inches and watercooler-discussion than a simple fine. I think the judge was thinking.
Re:jail time? (Score:5, Insightful)
because corporations are the new aristocracy. in the olden days committing a crime against an aristocrat was a far worse offense than the same crime committed against a commoner. ridiculously harsh sentences were there to reinforce the difference in status. if you stole from or committed any other offense against an aristocrat/noble they could pretty much do whatever they wanted with you. that was their aristocratic privilege.
as caste systems began to fall out of favor with educated societies people began to seek a more egalitarian justice system. therefore punishments for crimes were the same regardless of the socioeconomic status of either the perpetrator or victim. but like the concept of democracy this egalitarian idealism didn't last for very long in practice. a corporate plutocracy was quickly created to replace the nobles and ruling elite of the past.
and with corporate interests dominating the government & political system in most capitalist societies, the same double standards are again resurfacing. that is why the RIAA is allowed to bully regular citizens using the threat of costly court battles to extort money from innocent individuals, and individuals convicted to pirating music are ordered to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for "stealing" $20-30 worth of music. similarly, non-malicious hackers accused of causing financial damages to large corporations are often punished more severely than violent offenders.
A bit overboard on the second part (Score:4, Insightful)
I think I'm more bothered by the fact that he can't possess any video recording device, of any sort, outside of his home, for any reason, for an entire year. Last I checked, most people don't automatically walk into a movie theater the second they leave their homes.
Re:Is this any surprise? (Score:5, Insightful)
That you think that jail time is remotely acceptable, such that not getting it makes him "lucky", speaks volumes about the level of brainwashing that the RIAA and its global cohorts have managed to inflict upon the public.
In the digital age, copying a film or music track should be a misdemeanor, given that the principles of the rule of law instruct that the ease of the offense, its commonality, the view that the general public has of it and the mindset that people have when they do it all have to be taken into account.
Assigning jail time to an action that is as socially innocuous as copying an MP3 violates all of these. It is obviously only there to protect the now-defunct business model that the recording studios live by, and has no basis as a common social conception of what is and is not morally acceptable.
Which, when you break it down, is what the law is supposed to be; commonly accepted morality. We as a society have become so socially sick that this fundamental concept seems odd to even state.
Double Standard for Jail Time (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a bit rich since the movie industry itself regularly engages in fraud to rip off movie makers and actors. Did you know the author of Forrest Gump didn't make a single cent from the movie, the smash hit My Big Fat Greek Wedding technically made a loss (so the actors were ripped off royalties) and both Rob Schneider and Spielberg and many others have both stolen movie ideas in the past and baulked at paying the creators. So why is camcording a movie a criminal offense publishable by jail but fraud isn't? and in the US why is fraud only ever settled in civil courts without the threat of jail?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting [wikipedia.org]
http://www.tmz.com/2007/12/11/aussies-to-adam-you-stole-our-gay-firemen-flick/ [tmz.com]
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=335127 [ninemsn.com.au]
Re:The judge's comments annoyed me in this one (Score:5, Insightful)
He's not saying it's the same at all. He's making an analogy. Steal a loaf of bread to eat, they will go easy on you. Steal it to sell it they will not. Record a movie for your own use, they can't even charge you under this law. Record a movie and sell copies, they can!
Would it make you feel less righteous indignation if he compared it to breaking and entering? If you break into a home with intent to rob, they'll throw the book at you. If you are caught in a storm and break into a remote cabin you stumble across, that's a completely different situation. Better?
Re:What took so long? (Score:3, Insightful)
This wasn't a crime where anyone's right to physical security was threatened. Police just took their time to investigate, gathered evidence, and made a case against the accused. I don't see what's wrong with this. I'm GLAD it took this long. It means the police didn't take (m)any short cuts. This is just what due diligence by the police looks like. We still have some semblance of it in Canada.
Re:Your Movie Rights Online. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Is this any surprise? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope, I'm not brainwashed. However, I am minded to reply to your comments.
1) The ease of the offense: We're not talking Ctrl-X Ctrl-Y, we're talking about a man taking a digital camcorder into a movie theater, setting himself up in a good vantage point, taking pains to conceal the camera (he used a sock or something, IIRC, to hide the recording indicators) -- are all these easy? Would the average moviegoer do this? You tell me.
2) Commonality. Again, the average person knows how to copy files. The average person does not bring a camcorder into the movie theaters, the last time I checked anyway.
3) The view that the general public has. Again, I haven't polled the general public about this but even given the comments I've seen on this article on /. (duh, serves him right, etc.) I think that it's obvious that the 'general public' would consider copying a file a bit more mundane than actually bringing in equipment to record a movie.
4) The mindset that people have when they do it. I'm not even gonna touch this one. I think we have all formed a pretty good opinion of what his mindset was - and it wasn't to make an archival copy to watch later. Although I will be the first to admit that I don't know this for a fact.
So, in my eyes, your argument that assigning jail time to an action 'as socially innocuous as copying an MP3' appears to beg the question of whether setting up video recording equipment in a movie theater is equally socially innocuous. I would hasten to argue that it is not. These are two separate kinds of actions.
The question of whether it 'protects the now-defunct business model' is moot.
Re:The judge's comments annoyed me in this one (Score:3, Insightful)
Good point, I mis-read it and was hasty in assuming she was saying copyright infringement is the same thing as stealing. It still irks me though that she even used the stealing analogy given the topic of the case.
The movie and recording industries would love people to believe the claim of copyright infringement being the same as stealing -- they spend enough time trying to tell me and everyone else. From what's supposed to be a respected legal position, she's giving them a heap of new quotations in connection with a copyright case for everyone to get confused with.
Re:Your Movie Rights Online. (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, the movie is just electromagnetic radiation and variations of pressure in the air, right? Why aren't we allowed to reproduce them, huh?
The correct answer is that the whole thing is stupid. We look at copyrighted media as just the media, and not what's on it. Imagine if we did that with private data? I'm allowed to copy bits, so I can copy your bits off your hard drive, or off your bank account, or wherever your credit card details are stored. Oh, they are stored physically? Well, since I'm allowed to capture light in my camera, I'll just photograph your documents/credit card.
Thankfully, for all of us, the courts aren't so stupid. They realise that the value of media is more than the physical components. Unfortunately for some, the realisation that arrangement of mundane materials can have value in itself opens the door to applying the concept of property. I guess you have to take the good with the bad. You have to pay for your media, but then again, you get to keep the rest of your life savings.
Re:Double Standard for Jail Time (Score:1, Insightful)
So why is camcording a movie a criminal offense publishable by jail but fraud isn't?
Two wrongs don't make a right?
Re:Your Movie Rights Online. (Score:3, Insightful)
Besides, a movie ticket is a license to view the film once. If you want to do it multiple times you need to buy a different kind of license, called a DVD.
what the law is supposed to be ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, society is sick when so many people are thinking, "But he shouldn't have been ..." instead of "Why can't the theatre just confiscate the tape, eject him from the theatre, and bar him from coming back?
As far as we know, this was a first offense.
Re:Your Movie Rights Online. (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's not forget this little gem:
The Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association was disappointed that jail time was not given.
The fact that someone could get jail time for recording a movie is scary enough. The fact that the CMPDA wants to throw everyone caught recording a film into the slammer is just plain terrifying.
The law and the common morality (Score:4, Insightful)
Setting aside for a moment what the law is supposed to do, we must recognize that it does reflect the common morality.
Two hundred years ago, the common view of the world was a lot more dog-eat-dog than it is now. Malthus was an optimist. Actually, Malthus is still an optimist, but the misinterpretation was considered optimistic back then. There was a prevailing opinion that the only way a person could have a reasonable standard of living was on the back of at least a few someone else's slave labor. Even the guys on the bottom accepted that idea to a certain extent. (Speaking from a "western" point of view, since we are talking about western laws. The moralities and laws of the people that were imported to be the new bottom rung didn't count, which, of course, makes the slave trade that much more evil.)
The revolutionary concept was that we didn't have to be at war with everyone else to survive. That we didn't have to oppress others to have something good of our own. And we've forgotten that concept.
And this law, frankly, is stark evidence that we have forgotten it.
Draconian penalty (Score:3, Insightful)
The Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association was disappointed that jail time was not given
Which is why it is just as well that the prosecutor is not the same as the judge.
The man was also banned for a year from possessing any video recording equipment, even a video-capable cellphone, outside of his home.
Which is what I think is wrong on many levels. A fine is OK, I think - he knew that he was doing something that was illegal and it had to have consequences. A ban from going to theatre might have been reasonable too; but banning a person from carrying any video recording equipment in public is likely to be perceived as wrong. The validity of any law rests ultimately on public support, not on the severity of the punishments, and if penalties are seen as unreasonable, you lose the public support. We can see this in several places in UK - when the police want to investigate even a murder in certain areas, they don't get anywhere, because people don't support them. Whole local communities have somehow lost their trust in the authorities and simply don't want to help the police. From that perspective it may turn out to be a very stupid decision by the judge.
Re:Your Movie Rights Online. (Score:5, Insightful)
What I find extreme is that there was the possibility of jail in the first place. He didn't use violence. He didn't threaten anyone. He's guilty of using a video camera in the wrong room.
The worst you can accuse him of is that he was going to cause economic harm to a corporation (and even that's a stretch - how many people do you know that skip going to the cinema because some shitty rip is available? The only people I know who watch rips is because they can't physically go, and the rip is better than nothing)
They didn't find a massive stash of recorded films and a dedicated shadowy organization ready to run off millions of DVDs and sell them across the far east, with him as the head making millions in profit. they found an unemployed builder on what appears to be his first offence. They didn't convict him of distribution or even copying.
Yet the studios wanted to put him in jail for using a camera. That's what I find extreme.
Professional criminal (Score:3, Insightful)
Look, someone with a video camera in the theater is likely not a high-school kid making copies to file share with his classmates. In all likelihood this person had done it before, many times which is why they were waiting for him with cops and all (yes Virginia, movies have theater-specific watermarks).
The only reason people here are supporting this guy is reflexive anti-RIAA sentiment, nothing else.
On this case, they seem to have landed a professional criminal who makes it a business to record movies and sell them for distribution, in which case jail time is not out of the question.
Re:Your Movie Rights Online. (Score:3, Insightful)
The studios want him in jail for breaking the law. Thankfully that didn't happen but equally the guy's a class A MORON who should have maybe read those warnings before the film that told him the penalties he could face if he attempted to film the movie, eh?
I find it hard to have sympathy for dribbling incompetents.