Five Years In Jail For Putting A Movie Online
from the seems-a-bit...-excessive dept
The latest Hollywood friendly law to be proposed by some Senators who have strong Hollywood financial backing would make it a felony to take a video camera into a movie theater or to put a film up on the internet, with penalties including up to five years in jail. Of course, we already have copyright law that covers this particular crime, but that’s not enough for folks in Hollywood who seem to believe that the more you criminalize, the more people will want to pay you. Now, clearly, videotaping a film in the theater or putting it on the internet is illegal. But, I don’t see how it requires a new law, or how anyone could possibly justify five years in prison for the action. The bill won’t go anywhere as it’s being introduced just as the session is ending, but it is likely to show up again next year. It will be interesting to see what happens when video cameras on mobile phones become more common. Will people be prevented from taking their phones into the theater as well? If someone wants to record a brief clip to send to a friend (which could be seen as promoting the film) will they get tossed in jail?
Comments on “Five Years In Jail For Putting A Movie Online”
I hope it passes, and I hope some with more guts t
Goes into the theater, records the video with 1/3 of the screen blocked by a placard with the name/address and contact info of the person who does the recording as an act of civil disobdience to what is a assine law.
Matrix 3
I was disappointed with Matrix Revolutions, not because the movie was bad (it wasn’t) but because it didn’t answer the questions I wanted answered.
A lot of people I know that were drooling all over themselves up to 11/5 were suddenly too busy after the first reviews were up and many of them still haven’t seen the movie.
Several of them have asked me “hey, you download a lot of movies, can you get Matrix 3 yet? I’m not sure I want to pay to see it”.
These are the same people who paid $7 to see Matrix 2 at least once at the regular theater and then paid $10.50 to go see it *again* at the IMAX.
Knowing that you can download (or ask someone else to do it for your) can really hurt sales of movies that aren’t as great as people are hoping. This is similar to the story a couple of months back about cell phones and instant messaging hurting The Hulk’s opening week.
People find out that a movie sucks pretty quick these days…
Now, if Hollywood would just stop making movies that suck, well…