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Author
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Topic: LA Camcorder Pirate Sentenced
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John Pytlak
Film God
Posts: 9987
From: Rochester, NY 14650-1922
Registered: Jan 2000
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posted 05-10-2004 09:12 AM
From today's Hollywood Reporter:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/brief_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000507152
quote:
May 08, 2004
Man sentenced in theater camcording case
A man caught using a video recorder to make an illegal copy of "The Alamo" was sentenced this week to 42 days in jail and three years probation, officials said Friday. Ruben Centeno Moreno, 34, was arrested April 12 for using a camcorder when a projectionist, who was scanning the audience with a pair of night-vision goggles, noticed the light on Moreno's camera. Moreno became one of the first to be arrested under California's new "anti-camcorder" law, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. The new state law, which took effect Jan. 1, makes it a misdemeanor to take a camcorder into a theater with the intent of taping a movie. Moreno also was ordered Monday to stay away from the location of the arrest, ordered to forfeit his Sony video camcorder and tape. He also was ordered not to possess any audiovisual device in a movie theater. Federal authorities estimate that illegal copying of films costs the entertainment industry as much as $3 billion a year. Movie officials said that translates directly into a loss of industry jobs. (AP)
http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200~20954~2117435,00.html
quote:
Anti-piracy progress touted
Officials cite arrests of two suspected of taping movies in theaters
By Rick Orlov and Lisa Friedman
Staff Writers
Los Angeles officials on Thursday announced progress in their crackdown on movie and video piracy, even as lawmakers in Washington warned that the federal government lacks money to expand its fight against the crime.
At a news conference at The Grove at Farmers Market, officials said misdemeanor charges had been filed against two men spotted by projectionists taping movies in theaters.
Ruben Moreno, 34, is charged with taping "The Alamo" at Pacific Winnetka in Chatsworth, and Min Jae Joun is accused of taping "The Passion of the Christ" at the Pacific Theater at The Grove. If convicted, they face $2,500 fines and up to one year in jail.
"This is a big business and we need to send a message that if you illegally make a copy of a film, package it and sell it, you are going to be prosecuted, and you are going to go to jail," Mayor James Hahn said.
The news came as officers from the LAPD's Organized Crime and Vice Division and agents with the Motion Picture Association of America seized more than 5,000 pirated DVDs and $5,000 in computer equipment during raids at three homes. Four men were arrested on suspicion of violating federal copyrights.
And in Washington, D.C., Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, told the nation's top entertainment chiefs that there's a limit to the amount of money the federal government can spend on anti-piracy efforts.
"What with the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan, it's just not going to be increased any substantial amount," Stevens said.
Steven's remarks came as a blow to the music, motion picture and software industries, who are looking for ways to stop the rampant illegal downloading and copying of movies, CDs and computer programs.
According to the MPAA, the movie industry alone loses about $3 billion in non-Internet piracy each year.
"I think he was giving us some brute reality about the paucity of money," MPAA President Jack Valenti said after the hearing.
At the same time, entertainment industry leaders said they were encouraged by lawmakers who were receptive to other measures the Senate can take to combat piracy. Among them: creating a special section of intellectual property within the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative; and elevate the status of the State Department's intellectual property division to give it greater authority.
Also on Thursday, a key Senate committee approved by voice vote legislation written by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Sen. John Coryn, R-Texas, that makes secret camcorder recordings of movies punishable by up to six years in prison. It also increases penalties for distributing copies of a work before the copyright holder has had a chance to get the product to market.
Rick Orlov, (213) 978-0390 rick.orlov@dailynews.com
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Ron Keillor
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 166
From: Vancouver, B.C. Canada
Registered: Jul 2003
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posted 05-10-2004 01:47 PM
rom the May 07, 2004 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0507/p13s02-almo.html
The reel pirates of Hollywood
Guys sneaking camcorders into theaters are the cliché, but the most damaging theft is inside Hollywood.
By Gloria goodale | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
LAS VEGAS - Brandon Langley may have been just a projectionist in a suburban Atlanta multiplex, but this past week, the amateur "filmmaker" got his very own industry close-up.
Not for his handiwork on-screen, but behind the scenes.
The 21-year-old former movie theater employee is the latest and one of a small but growing number of industry "insiders" to be prosecuted for attempting to illegal copy a major feature film. On Nov. 5, Georgia prosecutors allege, he was caught recording "Matrix Revolutions" from the safety of his projection booth, capturing a high-quality soundtrack by plugging directly into the theater's sound system.
"We're hoping to use this as a case to show that piracy is against the law," says J. Tom Morgan, who was the DeKalb County district attorney at the time. He now helps fight piracy for the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). "Many people seem to think, 'Why bother prosecute a case like this?' But the ramifications are really big, starting with the potential loss of income to the theater owners to everyone involved in the movie industry."
According to the MPAA, the low-quality camcorder-in-a-popcorn-box DVD, with such value-added extras as the silhouettes of people headed to the concession stand, accounts for some 90 percent of the illegal products spread out on urban sidewalk blankets. But 77 percent of the less available, but far more desirable, high-quality DVDs come from industry insiders, according to a recent AT&T Labs study. The prosecution of Mr. Langley, say industry officials, is intended to send a clear signal: The film industry is serious about stopping illegal copying, whatever the source.
"This affects the movie industry from the highest levels down to the guy who sells popcorn or the set painter," says John Malcolm, MPAA director of worldwide piracy operations. "If people can't get a reasonable return they'll stop making movies, and that's a shame, because the first to go will be the risky, edgier films."
Film studio insiders say they have watched and learned from the music industry. Faced with $3.5 billion in DVD piracy losses this year - with that number expected to nearly double next year - Fox Entertainment president Peter Chernin told his staff, "you'd have to be brain dead to ignore what piracy did to [the music industry]."
The industries have differences, most notably the size of the digital file: three minutes of sound versus 90-plus of video and sound. But the same global bootlegging network fuels both. Mass production houses, concentrated in Asia, can churn out thousands of DVDs from one master. A single upload makes a digital copy available to anyone with a high-speed computer connection. MPAA officials say losses from Internet downloading nearly equal the hit from illegal DVD sales.
But identifying the problem is the easy part, say those on the front lines.
Many theater owners maintain that the insider leakage is more serious than the MPAA is willing to admit. "The DVDs they need to worry about are not coming from the guy with a camcorder in the movie theater," says James McKenna, a theater owner for 54 years until his retirement this past fall. His staff nabbed Langley in one of his Georgia theaters, after a manager allegedly found pirating equipment belonging to Langley.
"People want to buy good-quality films, and insiders are the only ones who can really provide that," he says. "It's usually someone inside in need of some extra money who's willing to do this."
Many industry insiders agree, but are reluctant to discuss it on the record.
A film editor who asked to remain anonymous says that during the course of making a film, his office produces dozens of copies in various stages of completion.
"I can flip the original in my DVD copier right at my edit station, burn a bunch of copies from that day's work, and send them off," he says. "There's no way to track them, and there sure ... isn't any extra security around them. They could go anywhere, to anyone."
A producer who also asked to remain nameless adds that there are copies of movies freely floating around. "Once you're involved with a film, of course there are going to be copies available," she says. "It's unavoidable."
Brian Lakamp, senior vice president of technology for Sony Pictures, points to the additional industry outlets for high-quality originals, such as the teams who cut the film trailers, and says, "it has to be contained. I won't have a job if it's not."
In the past year, studios say they have stepped up efforts to tighten this sort of internal seepage. Many studios now require recipients to sign nonrelease papers before receiving early screeners.
"We've done a good job of controlling prerelease leakage," says Jerry Pierce, Universal's senior vice president of technology. "However, we [still] lose 100 percent of theatrical releases to pirates."
This position, say theater owners, means that the buck stops at the popcorn stand. "We're faced with the question of how to stop it and really make a difference," says Michael Norris, president of Loews Cineplex Entertainment. The nationwide theater chain has created an instructional video for its theater owners, loaded with tips and tricks for foiling the pirate/patron. "We're trying to train our employees and management on how to detect someone who might be doing this," he says.
The video, which was shown at the annual theater owners ShoWest convention in Las Vegas in March, details how to stand in front of a camera on a tripod in order to ruin the copy of the film, but cautions employees not to be confrontational. It also has some laughable touches, such as a shifty, dark-haired man who sidles in with the pointy legs of a tripod protruding from the edges of his coat.
But without question, the tactic that left more than a few theater owners rolling in the aisles was the latest in 21st-century technology designed to fight digital piracy: night-vision goggles. "Not in my theater or any theater I know," says McKenna. "I've talked to people in the circuit enough to know that nobody who runs a theater is going to send someone in with green goggles into an auditorium."
It's tough enough to lure customers into the theater without scaring them half to death, he adds.
"It just gets silly when people start saying we're going to run [our] people around auditoriums," he says. "It's hard enough to make people [customers] happy without that."
Theater owners have begun pressing studios to clean up their own houses. "We're doing it legislatively and we're educating our folks in the theater business," says John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theatre Owners. "We expect the studios to be serious about it as well."
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Ron Keillor
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 166
From: Vancouver, B.C. Canada
Registered: Jul 2003
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posted 11-24-2004 03:07 PM
from the bbc
Actor Carmine Caridi has been fined £300,000 (£160,000) after copies of new movies he was sent as an Oscars voter ended up on the internet.
Mr Caridi, 70, who had small parts in two Godfather films, was sued for sending videos of The Last Samurai and Mystic River to another man.
Mr Caridi said he thought Russell Sprague was just a film buff - but in fact he put them online to download.
The case led to a crackdown on sending pre-release films to Oscars voters.
Copyright infringement
Movie studios send preview copies of their new films to members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in the hope of getting enough votes for an Oscar nomination.
Authorities said Mr Caridi has admitted sending VHS tapes of about 60 movies to Mr Sprague, 51, from Illinois.
Mr Sprague has pleaded guilty to one count of copyright infringement and is waiting to be sentenced.
Mr Caridi's fine of $150,000 (£80,000) each for The Last Samurai and Mystic River, imposed by the US District Court in Los Angeles, relates to a lawsuit filed by Warner Bros.
Another case filed by Columbia Pictures is pending.
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