Between things like this, punishing wifi providers for what their users are doing and the whole push for ‘no Interwebitube for you for life’ and worse laws, the music and film industries are additional harbingers of the fascist state we are creating for ourselves where industry creates the laws that govern the people.
Taping three minutes of “Twilight: New Moon” during a visit to a Rosemont movie theater landed Samantha Tumpach in a jail cell for two nights.
Now, the 22-year-old Chicago woman faces up to three years in prison after being charged with a rarely invoked felony designed to prevent movie patrons from recording hot new movies and selling bootleg copies.
But Tumpach insisted Wednesday that’s not what she was doing — she was actually taping parts of her sister’s surprise birthday party celebrated at the Muvico Theater in Rosemont.
While she acknowledged there are short bits of the movie on her digital camera, there are other images that have nothing to do with the new film — including she and a few other family members singing “Happy Birthday” to her 29-year-old sister at the theater.
Everyone in the Cook County area. Write down the name of this theater, and avoid it. You got more choices. IF you want, send them tickets from other theaters saying “we used to go to your theater. Free Samantha!”
I don’t think the theater should stay in business, but then again alot of people would lose their jobs for what probably was the decision of at most a few in management to take it further.
#1
If Samantha wasn’t a thief then she wouldn’t be in the mess she now finds herself.
Protect the thief, right Eric?
We have no record of her paying a performance fee to sing “Happy Birthday” in public.
You get what you deserve for even bringing a video camera to a movie theater…Where have you been for the last 4 years?
She paid money to watch Twilight: New Moon? Willingly?
That alone deserves the death penalty. 🙂
Three years in prison seems a little excessive for three minutes of movie recording. That said, intent is 9/10ths of the law and the case will likely be dropped. The theater manager who insisted on pressing charges should lose his job. Theaters have been struggling recently and it seems like calling the police on your patrons isn’t going to improve business much.
Andy said,
“#1
If Samantha wasn’t a thief then she wouldn’t be in the mess she now finds herself.
Protect the thief, right Eric?”
.
Vas is dis!
This activity is strictly verboten!
Heil MPAA!
Heil MPAA!
I’m guessing that the theater employee(s) who turned her in will receive a small award from the MPAA.
You get less time in jail for beating someone up and sending them to the hospital. Got to love a system where intellectual property crimes are now deemed more serious then violent crime.
How about the whole video is posted to Youtube so we can judge what was really going on. Last time I checked movie theaters were dark placed where videoing each other would be fairly futile, and certainly singing happy birthday would piss off everyone else watching the movie!
Why was the camera rolling DURING THE MOVIE?
#10 gquaglia. As predicted in 1948 by Cyril Kornbluth (and Frederik Pohl) in their classic novel “The Space Merchants”. Except in that scenario, breaking a contract was a more serious crime than murder / manslaughter. And people were constantly getting caught in contracts (like click-through EULA’s of today) but they couldn’t shrug off the consequences. Fact is sadder than fiction.
#3 – Let me guess, you are an MPAA asshat?
Unbelievable. They should be happy a group of people paid to go to their theatre and celebrate a birthday…which usually means more people than would have normally been there and bought more stuff than they normally would have.
This is what happens when you let Congress pimp your bleep!
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Wait to you really find out how the health care reform bill is going to work.
The tort lawyers get protected. Big Farma is going to be protected. Medicare is supposed to be chopped by half a trillion a year. Compensation for nursing homes gets cut and stay at home care. The cost of medical insurance is supposed to go up about 10% due to taxes. You can go to jail if you don’t have insurance and don’t pay the the fine. Benefits won’t start to kick in for at least 4 years but the bills start right away. After a few years a lot of the costs will be dumped onto the states who don’t have the money and will need to raise your taxes. 20,000,000 people won’t be covered. Some states got sweetheart deals. Businesses are going to get a major tax hike in a down economy.
Social security, medicare, medicaid, and the post office are all running in the red or will be shortly. The value of the dollar is falling like a brick. China is not happy about buying more bonds or most likely the ones they are already holding. I think we owe something like 500,000,000 a day on interest alone.
That is just the bleep that comes to mind off hand.
Don’t worry! Be happy! Congress is going to fix it. They aren’t going to miss a pay check and even without looking I’m sure they get free, unlimited medical care for as long as they live.
It’s the Jammie Thomas case , part two.
You pick an average person doing something
wrong that “everybody else” is doing.
Then slap them with a $2 million suit, hoping
to scare the thousands of anonymous violators.
When you do something wrong , there is always
a slight chance you might be the worlds example.
Forget the illegal taping. What the hell were they doing having a party while people tried to watch a serious (!) movie? Tell me a bunch of giggling teens isn’t worse than a cell phone? I say shoot them.
i suppose they are fortunate that the copyright police haven’t sought royalties for singing “happy birthday”.
Quit going to the movies. When Hollywood’s revenue stream dries up and they wonder what the hell happened, we can point out “its your fault”.