The recording didn’t cause any losses to Regal Cinemas nor the producers of Transformers, but still Regal Cinemas decided to prosecute to make an example of her..

The Arlington County prosecutor, Richard Trodden, told a Wired blogger that Regal Cinema continued to press the case. “They were saying, ‘Could you get her to admit that it wasn’t right.’ They wanted to make sure the message gets out.”

Indeed, Sejas did later state, “I totally forgot that I was not allowed to do that. I did it without thinking clearly.

In a plea agreement, Sejas pleaded guilty and paid a $71 fine for making an Unlawful Audiovisual Recording of a Motion Picture, a misdemeanor that could have resulted in a fine of up to $2500 and a year in jail. The law was placed on the books in Virgina and 37 other states under pressure by the Motion Picture industry.

Neither Regal Cinemas nor the producers of Transformers stood to take a loss from Sejas’ sharing of a 20-second cell-phone quality clip. The reason it did not occur to Sejas that she was doing something wrong is because she had no criminal intent! Note that Sejas was not charged with any copyright violation, as showing her brother a 20-second low-quality clip certainly would have fallen under Fair Use.

The MPAA decided years ago that copyright laws were not enough in their favor. Instead, the industry had to create new laws that avoided copyright altogether, wait for innocent victims like Sejas to stumble into them, and then make an example of them.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Sejas and her boyfriend were promptly escorted out of the movie theater, still confused about what just happened. “I was crying, I’ve never been in trouble before.”, she later said in a response to the trip to the police station.

Of course Sejas had no intention to sell the 600 millisecond clip, she wasn’t even planning to put it on YouTube. The only thing she wanted to do was show it to her 13 year old brother, who was dying to see the movie himself. Unluckily theater owners just introduced their new zero-tolerance policy since everyone can be a pirate.

Kendrick Macdowell, a representative National Association of Theater Owners said in a response: “We cannot educate theater managers to be judges and juries in what is acceptable. Theater managers cannot distinguish between good and bad stealing.”

Good and bad stealing? Nuts!, the guy obviously has no clue what he’s talking about. If all theater owners treat their customers like this they will start to lose even more money than they already do now. And guess who they will be blaming? Right, Pirates.

Sejas will go to trial later this month for recording a motion picture without permission, and is facing up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine. Seriously unbelievable.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.