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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181 Responses
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20 seconds and 600 milliseconds are not the same thing so which was it?
well was it a camcorder or a phone. if it was a camcorder, she is guilty on 2 counts of gross stupidity. 1) taking a camcorder into a movie theater and 2) going to see this shitty movie with a camcorder. fucktard
You guys need to read the article. She’s not being charged for being a thief and stealing the movie to sell. She is being charged for “recording a motion picture without permission.” It doesn’t matter if you are going to sell it or not, it’s illegal to record a movie period. Now was it a little harsh to drag her out of the theater? Possibly, but she did break the law, whether it was for her 13 year old brother or to sell on the internet.
Try to think first before jumping to conclusions about how innocent she is. Wait to see the full story I mean she could have spent 20 minutes setting up cameras to film at different angles and the another camera to film her filming of documentary. Thats like robbing a bank and saying well I only stole $20 when i got caught.
This is just as retarded as when they sued the 8 year old girl for downloading a movie. The same girl who’s mother is paralyzed waste-down and living off of wel-fare. Not only are they fined, they had to travel across state for the trial.
Heartless Assholes….
boycott that theater!
the mpaa and the movie theaters cause these problems.
all of this copy protection reduces the value of the content
what the mpaa is doing is making the value of the original content much lower than pirated content.
how encouraging is it for someone to go to the movies if they know that they are instantly considered as a criminal and are closely monitored.
would you go into a bar where everyone hates you or would you go into one where everyone is happy?
ps the tv ad for transformers is much longer than 20 seconds and when my DVR box records my favorite shows on animal planet, theres at least 3 transformers ads recorded which contain more than 20 seconds of movie footage, I don’t see the police going crazy on me
[quote comment="141288"]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.[/quote]
FUCKING PWNT.
She’ll get off. They’ll run her record. Notice she has none. They’ll listen to her story. It plays out.
Done deal. She’s in and out of court in 15 mins.
Milo…bullshit.
Whether the law was broken or not is irrelevant.
This is classic letting corporations run your life.
You are the people, this is your governement.
You didnt vote for this law and its not consitutional but many senators lined their pockets with large bills to enact it.
Your ok with corruption? You dont want to have a say in the laws of your own life? You think this girl was screwwed or got what she deserved or justify it because some will suffer for the greater good.
Look around… the greater good are the corporations not you or me. So please STFU and start doing something. Put up or move to another country. America is the land of the free and the home of the brave. Repeat that.
We need to make the MPAA and RIAA pay for what they are doing to us. Take them down hard.
court is never 15 mins and i mean never
Call them and tell that they got a PR nightmare brewing if they don’t drop this right away.
Regal Cinemas customer service number: 1-877-835-5734 and the theater itself is 703-527-9730. Please call them and express you disgust at their heavy handed approach.
Soon… very soon. The world will change, piracy will no longer exist in the world of freedom, but is there hope for making money in the industry? Of course, there are always the people too afraid to go against the system, “man”, or anything else. Property is stolen if it has physical value, there fore if you pirate a movie/movie that sucks and then delete it, it has no value to you, so it isn’t valuable, so STFU MPAA and RIAA! Die.
Yours Truly,
Zero the Hero
Wow I had nothing against downloading a movie but I know it’s wrong. Reading these comments it’s disturbing to see that so many people feel they are entitled to steal just because they want it. Nowadays people are just becoming selfish pigs who care about nothing but themselves and cry when they don’t get instant gratification. Don’t get me wrong, it’s ok the be against “the man” and big business but have valid reasons not just trying to justify stealing.
oh give me a break. what a bunch of arsehats
@ Jai
Couldn’t resist, so once again:
GO FUCK YOURSELF ELSEWHERE STUPID TWAT!
Fuck the stupid, skewed, unfair, uneducated, unaware object we call the “legal system” here in the US.
And fuck the MPAA even more.
I haven’t been to a cinema for months, either. Funny how I’ve been able to watch the latest movies, though…
The problem with all of you with “it’s stealing, it’s the law period…” arguments is that you can’t see how insanely un-enforcable this law is. The tide is so so so so far past the point of turning that “the law” is nothing more than randomly coming down on any given person.
“Because everybody else is” is no excuse to break the law. But a law that is busting less than a percent of a percent of a percent of the crimes being commited turns into something that just seems mean. I bet you have used a cassette tape at some point if you’re over 30. What if in the eighties they had started pulling over cars at random and arresting people who had self recorded audio tapes in their stereos?
[quote comment="141116"]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.[/quote]
Wow, maybe I will start going back to the theaters! Sounds like fun to me.
A 20 second clip is potentially fair use. If she gets a decent attorney, she will get off. Then, she can litigate for false arrest and sue the theater besides.
Creeping fascism must be resisted on all fronts!
She should have gone to a bittorrent site, downloaded the movie as well as adobe premiere + keygen, install premiere, and cut the scene.
would definately be fair use and as she was going to show it to her brother it would be classed as advertising for the cinema so she should sent them a bill as well
So the liberal retort is: “well, since they only catch a few of us, it should be made legal. I mean, after all, only a few of us get caught, so copyright, and other laws, go out the window. I guess if I murdered 100 people, but only got caught for 1 murder, I should be let go.
Face it liberals: You’re all stealing, and are trying to justify it. Copyright protection is a justified law; stop trying to spin it in your favor.
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