As for the NYU folk consider this: If I were witting a a 20 page paper and plagiarized 2 sentences of the paper with out giving credit, I WOULD BE EXPELLED, no questions asked, no excuse good enough. It’s too bad this is probably a really nice person, but she broke the law and should be punished in some way.

Also, consider this, it’s pretty hard to identify someone recording a movie in a big theatre for only 20 seconds unless the person who caught them was in close proximity and looking for such, it would seem to me the recording was going on for much longer, but that, and probably several other relevant facts did not cross the mind of the bias editor who wrote the article.

This war on piracy is getting old. Make the experience a better value and you’ll attract the majority of the pirates back. But like the drug war you’ll never stop it all, so fighting it is pointless. Laws like this only keep people who wouldn’t pirate in the first place from pirating.

Hopefully she’ll get a lawyer that has some experience with copyright and can show how this BAD law doesn’t work with current fair use policy. And it’s very simple, if the evidence shows that she had 20 seconds of the movie and she wasn’t filming when asked to leave, than it’s obvious she’s no pirate. I can’t believe she’d use such a lame excuse if it wasn’t the truth. Hell if I want to take my camera into a theater to test it’s low light filming capabilities I should be able to as long as I don’t film a substantial portion of the movie. Like she was part of a ring of pirates that film movies 20 seconds at a time.

I think it’s nice that Regal doesn’t hold enough stock in their managers to decide if there’s reason to call the cops. I’m amazed the cops didn’t read the manager the riot act for wasting their time.

For a crime to be committed there has to be a reasonable intent to commit the crime. That’s why people who kill people in car accidents aren’t tried for murder in most cases. It’s obvious she wasn’t intending to commit a crime, and for all we know she didn’t know there was the FECA making it a crime to film inside theaters. And if any of you would take a moment to see past your MPAA rhetoric you’d see that too.

Yeah she did something stupid, and yeah there’s a BS law against it, but that doesn’t excuse Regal’s asinine zero tolerance policy.

Regal Cinemas is one of the worst theater chains, and this is just one more example of why. Theaters that treat customers like criminals, charge outrageous ticket and concession prices, and deliver a sub par experience shouldn’t be patronized. I’ve not been to my local Regal since they shortened their matinee times to 3 leaving only one showing per day that wasn’t $10.50.

I’m all for a boycott, but let’s do it for all their problems not just this one. If we don’t make an effort to take back our theater going experience, going to the movies will be as unbearable as air travel.