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 $2,500 fine. Seriously unbelievable.
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179 Responses
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well it is illegal in the first place so HA! take that u dumb bitch
MPAA cant control everyone and eventually they will fall
the police and the cinema guy is stupid. poor little girl. where is going our freedom. 20 secondes of video for 2500$ its a lot of $ the 20 secondes
“I’m proud to be an american where at least I know I’m free” :) :) *luck guys*
In Europe Judge’s doesnt give a shit how much you download, couse they know that there is no harm in it…
we have brains, not bribes, and thats how free and equivalent world runs!
Know what makes me laugh the most….the fact they give larger fines and jail sentences to people that RECORD DIGITAL CONTENT, compared to people that physically attack people. Recording a movie and sharing it with your friends does not involve rape or killing a freaking person.
Stop focusing on digital related acts! Arresting hackers to bank companys and such is fine, but recording an entertainment related movie? Cmon now…There’s better things you can do then arrest recorders.
shit for brains dumbass bullshit cock sucking father rapeing fucktard Jai.
what’s with you and your pathetic little prods at ‘liberals’? was your sensei brutally murdered by one? did the mean liberal touch you in a bad place as a child? seriously! give it up! pointing the finger at people who are open minded and aren’t scared of change really shows how much of a narrow minded prick you really are. Saying “LIBERALS: you’re “its unethical” card has been played out.” only makes me wonder if a conservative could come in here and say that the brutal consequences of minor offenses in copyright law is unethical and you would give him the benefit of the doubt.
In short, you really need to shut the fuck up about ‘liberals,’ this is not the kind of debate that needs to be politically charged by a dumbass like you with a political grudge.
Another topic that still boils my blood, is your constant defense of capitalism. You talk as if its writing in stone on the motherfucking constitution that America HAS to be capitalistic. As if it’s morally wrong to try and change the way our economy has twisted itself into stretching the gap between the lower and higher classes. And your answer to anybody who wants to see this economy change is ‘Leave.’ it’s not ‘take the active stance to change the economy for the better.’ no, it’s ‘Leave. we don’t want you.’ And despite the fact that America was founded on the idea that we shouldn’t leave when something is wrong; no, we should strive to change it. Remember, what the founding fathers did by revolting against british imperial rule, was considered high treason. Each one of them would have been executed had the American Revolution not succeeded. To throw their determination in lew of that risk out the window by telling people who dislike the state of their union to ‘move to china’ is the true threat to this nation.
so now please, Jai, leave this conversation exit this website for the rest of your life, and remove yourself from any and all debates for the remaining duration of You.
Please, think of the children.
-Orka Ork
Stealing is stealing with all the hype today she should have known. “If you can’t do the time don’t do the crime”.
Has anyone got the patience to wait until the case has gon to trial? just because this young person was charged does not mean she will receive the maximum. the court may just decide to rap her on the knuckles and send her home with a suspended sentenace. If most of you would stop tring to stir up emotions and wait there would be less stress in the world.
Reading some of these posts is blowing my mind. For all of you that think she is a victim, would you please stop drinking the cool aid. Really, do you honestly believe the media told this story fairly and objectively? Do you consider that she was caught in the act illegally recording the movie and was stopped? So, if she really only had 20 seconds, which is highly unlikely, then it is only because the theatre managers stopped her. I mean come on, I understand a pretty young teenager playing the victim to her parents and them possibly being naive enough to believe her crap, but do we all have to believe it? Do you think the police are that eager to enforce this law based on the way the facts were represented by the press? I guess, yet again, Americans are not responsible for their own behavior, criminals are victims and we are all just idiots that believe anything the press weants us to believe. WAKE UP.
Justified Law?
Criminals?
Can any of you asshats trying to support this girls arrest even tell me what the point of copyright is?
Oh you, can’t… so here we go. “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”
Am I lost or does this law and the current implementation do none of this when it comes to the RIAA and the MPAA. For fucks sake we extended copyright so that Disney could keep Mickey Mouse. We aren’t encouraging invention anymore, we are simply encouraging profiteering asswipes to be able to prosecute for ridiculous offenses.
This isn’t stealing, it’s violation of copyright. If I steal your car, you can’t use it anymore. I violate your copyright, you don’t even know about it!
She’s not a “poor little girl”.
Fact: She’s 19 (an Adult)
Fact: She recorded a movie
I doubt the fine will stick, but she deserves to be put through the trial and everything. You can’t bring a freaking camera into a theater and record some of it. How stupid is this “little girl”? Hopefully her IQ is higher than her age, but it doesn’t appear so.
I was once kicked out of a theatre for pulling out my phone during the movie, evidently that means I’m a pirate.
Seriously, that is the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard in a very long time. I feel bad for this girl who has to go to jail for something so stupid. It just goes to show how stupid the laws and politics are in this country. SERIOUSLY, UNBELIEVABLE! Because of this, I’m gonna never pay to watch a damn movie ever again.
Why didn’t they just delete the video. Hold the camera until the end of the movie and give it back. You know like a sane manager would do. Almost all the real Pirating (i.e. for profit) is done in other countries, where we can’t sue them. If you don’t believe me take a vacation to Russia, Mexico of China.
Right now the RIAA and MPAA are just trying to beat up a bunch of teenagers for barely being Pirates. Which just makes us more disturbed by they’re overreaction. Hence the feelings that piracy is fine. If you actually look at iTunes, they make 4 cents a song and the artist make 8 cents, the other 87 cents is lost to big business.
There’s an old saying that a company decision should be made from the perspective of “would you make that decision if it were pasted across the next edition of the Wall Street Journal?” Obviously this company missed that point… ‘young girl taped a poor quality clip on a cell phone’ - somebody certainly didn’t think that one through.
Or how much of a commercial could that clip have been for her brother and friends - how many new movie goers would it have created? Or if it went to the extreme and was loaded on YouTube - would it have resulted in a cheering marketing group for a success at Viral Marketing (and free advertising)?
The RIAA and MPAA are up against a stiff problem and this is just the death rattle for the industry - recording technology and internet distribution are progressing faster than they can cope. Musicians and Bands and film-makers are finding distribution outlets for their own works and the artists are directly profiting. The old studios are not really needed anymore - or at least not in the shape and size they have existed for decades. So they are struggling - any organization or organism fights for its survival - they are no different - but maintain some sense of honor and thought about what is going on.
Why not make media content or the theatre experience so overwhelmingly meaningful (high value to go to the theatre) or so amazingly inexpensive (super cheap tickets or music CDs) that it costs more to “pirate” than to just buy the content outright?
Oh, but that’s hard. You don’t get to blame Pirates. And you don’t get funny blurbs on major newspapers to discuss with your spouse over a morning latte.
I will retaliate by buying all the
PIRATED music, movies, software, etc.
the black market has to offer.
Poor little girl!!!!!!!!!!!
It’s cases like this where I really hope the jury knows its rights, and chooses to not convict her.
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/7006/rulebook.html
That’s a pretty fascinating read, in my opinion, and well worth the read for any American, as we all have the chance that we’ll end up on a jury someday.
This is why I don’t go to fucking movie theaters, I’ll either download the movie for free, or watch it at a friends house for free. Same for music, limewire pro ftw. If you like to pay out the ass for a shitty hollywood film then good for you. Keep sucking their cocks, and I’ll keep watching and listening for free. As if they don’t have enough money already, they want to take it away from everyone else in the world.
test
She had a Canon Powershot — a digital camera, at MOST capable of 640×480 and not for very long. This is clearly not an attempt at profit diminishing piracy. If she had gone in with a camcorder and a tripod, things would be different. Intent to pirate is not here. As others have stated, it falls within fair use.
Copyright law was written well before the digital era, and it’s more than obvious the laws need to be rewritten to make sense in terms of digitally recordable assets. If you consider a video or audio recording an asset of a company like you consider a car or some other tangible item, then any company that creates such intangible items, by nature of digital reproduction, has infinite assets. If the stock market really believed that, the movie and music industry would be infinitely rich and capitalism as we know it would collapse into a black hole of absurdity. Clearly digital copies of things have some finite value. Value is established by market forces. The internet is a market force. Clearly many people only want the product for free and won’t pay anything else. Copyright was intended to protect someone from unfair business competition. If I create a product that is uniquely my idea, then I get some time to make a living at it before others can join in. Furthermore, I can’t steal the Beatles music and call it my own. The theft in copyright situations is the idea, not the tangible product. Theft is when a tangible item is stolen. If I sneak into a theatre, I’ve stolen the theatre going experience from the movie house. If I steal a dvd, I’ve stolen a physical product that had cost of production. If I download a copy of a film, there is no theft from anybody because I just created something from nothing. That is not the protective purpose of copyright law. If I set up shop at home charging people to come see what I downloaded, that is something completely different because then I am engaging in business.
What the MPAA and RIAA claim as loss are really nothing more than potential loss — no guarantee that all those people willing to see something for free would pay even a penny for it otherwise. That is how market forces of supply and demand work. Demand diminishes as cost goes up. The increase of cost from free to a penny is an infinite increase, ergo the demand reduction should also be considered infinite by their own logic. In other words, they are not losing anything other than their dreams. Year after year the MPAA has record breaking gross profits. So what’s the problem?
As for Jai and people like him that sling ‘liberal’ as an insult and tell people they have no business challenging the laws of their land, that is called fascism. Americans are being americans precisely when they stand up against things they don’t like and demand changes. You say they should go to China, but actually I think you’re the one that would be happier there…
Horse shit.
Wow, asfsf has a real good point.
The deep fascist implications in this are disturbing. [quote comment="141726"][quote comment="141644"]once again, sooooooo happy to live in europe. all the thanks to my parents.
jai……. do you have a shotgun in your house to shoot all the kids that trespass your property? you seem that kind.
criminals..aaaarghh. :)[/quote]
No, not at all.
I agree, that this case is asinine!
But you liberals seem to think that stealing other artists creations is justified, when it is not.[/quote]
So when are you guys gonna try and make us wear armbands?
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