Teen Arrested for Recording 20 Second Movie Clip
Written by Ernesto on August 02, 2007Jhannet Sejas, a 19 year old girl was immediately arrested by the police after she recorded a 20 second clip from the movie “Transformers” that she wanted to show to her little brother. She now faces up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine.
Sejas was celebrating her 19th Birthday with her boyfriend in a local theater in Arlington. A few minutes after she taped the short clip the police came rushing in and took her into custody on the charges of “being a pirate”.
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.
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‘go to trial’
big MPAA mistake; which side is the jury going to believe?
haven’t been to a cinema in over a decade.. just as well.
A decade? guess what? i took out a cell phone in a theatre recently, to check the time, and put it on vibrate. a guy can down from the projection box apparently, asked to see my phone. i ask why, he says to check if it had a camera. this was before the lights were dimmed, durring PREVIEWS. who takes a single picture of MOVING FILM in DARKNESS, or of an ad in any form?
Absolutely appauling behavior on the Authorities’ and the Theatre manager’s part.
It may have been another story if they had just checked the content she’d recorded and left her be.
But they always have to take it way too far;
a $2500 fine for fuck sake!
Christ, id organise a boycott of that establishment until an apology is given to that poor girl.
Next week, the MPAA will require all movie goes be strip searched before entering theaters and will force those wishing to attend to watch the movie in the nude at gun point.
Pitiful.
BOYCOTT the MPAA!
This is such nonsense.
What will the next step be?
Bear-maze in the eyes of everyone who reaches for their cellphones?
I havent been in a few years to cinema… Because of crap like this.. (Mainly treating customers like crap)
My local theater is run by what amounts to the mentally retarded.
They couldn’t tell a movie pirate from an empty soda cup.
As such, I don’t have too much of a problem supporting that particular establishment… never the less, the only movie I’ve seen in the theater in YEARS is the simpsons movie… but c’mon, it’s the simpsons!
How stupid. Maybe it wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but she should have just been given a scare with the cops and told not to do it. Don’t actually put charges against her.
Most people don’t even know Cam rips exist, I bet she recorded it from her mobile too. This is a little ambiguous, but 20 seconds would really make me think cell phone.
This is simply pathetic, That poor woman!
I won’t be going to the cinema ever again.
This is why I hate movie theaters… Including the very annoying teenagers that won’t shut up and the kicking of the back of my seat… Theaters can suck a nut if they continue with policies like this.
simply because of this story, I have a strong urge to boycott movie theaters. this is how you lose money, and just because of the ridiculousness of this situation(seriously, call the police? why not just eject a pirate from your theater? i’m surprised the cops even showed up.) i will now “pirate” all my movies instead of paying almost 15 bucks for a ticket to a movie.
This is so sick
This is the USA our forefathers founded.
Death to the police state.
This almost made me literally be sick… This is ho you turn customers against you, good job idiots.
Feel so sorry for the girl…
That is really sad. What has our world come to? Charges against a 19 year old girl for pirating 20 seconds of a film?
/I agree with the teenagers that won’t shut up, however, not ALL of them are like that.
I most certainly am not, even though I’m only 16 - thinking everyone is the same is really what leads up to these things.
Hope she sues for emotional distress brought on by a ridiculously frivolous charge.
Does no-one have the necessary humanity left to make the obvious distinction between real “piracy”, and the harmless act of recording a snippet of a movie on mobile phone?
Brainless beureaucratic automatons.
lol. pirate girl, she knew wht she was doing
Harsh, but required.
You guys (the criminals who steal) are the ones to blame. When a law is enforced, innocents will suffer, unfortunately. But what you criminals fail to realize is: you guys are the reason they have such laws.
This girl broke the law, plain and simple. Don’t like the law? Petition to get it changed; whining in a blog’s comments’ section is so 2004.
Make a change, not a comment.
“Aug 03, 2007 at 02:44 by blahQuote blah
This almost made me literally be sick… This is ho you turn customers against you, good job idiots.
Feel so sorry for the girl…”
— Hey, no need to call her a “ho”!
:))
(kidding)
[quote]You guys (the criminals who steal) are the ones to blame.[/quote]
Sorry, but sharing is not stealing ;) No matter how the profit obsessed capitalists want to change the definition of stealing to suit them and their goals.
Well she knew the rules going into it. She choose to break the rules.
Cant afford to pay the fine, don’t do the crime!
Simple enough!
You people are only saying all of that crap because she is young and is a girl.
To say that someone is stealing, first you must check a person’s history. Is that person’s history looks dirty? Is there a record? Or is this a mistake?
What if a person wants to record for herself/himself a portion of a movie, and never intended to steal and distribute. How can anyone say someone else is stealing even though there is no actual proof of a distribution transaction take place, or even a selling transaction take place. A person was already paid for a ticket, a person used a brain or camcorder to watch, what’s the difference anyway?
I think the law for this with zero tolerance is plain wrong. Bottom line, these rich boys as always be greedy as they can be.
For example: If a person saw a movie, and the movie sucks so bad, a person goes home, tell everyone not to see a suck movie, and that specific movie makes no money anyway. I wonder these rich greedy bastards will ever come up a law that prevent movie goers not to say a movie suck, or else it’s stealing. No it’s pirate! No, even better, it’s illegal, and you will be charge with a crime, send to prison, and pay a hefty fine.
Why don’t they just make good movie, and the money automatically roll in anyway. Why can’t movie goers sue the theaters for let them pay to watch a suck movie eh?
What they trying to do is so murky, and I hate it. The end!
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