U.S. Charges Man in Camcorder-Piracy Crackdown

Found on eWEEK on Thursday, 04 August 2005
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A Missouri man is the first to be indicted under a new federal law that prohibits people from secretly videotaping movies when they are shown in theaters, the U.S. Justice Department said Thursday.

Curtis Salisbury, 19, used a camcorder to make copies of recent releases "The Perfect Man" and "Bewitched" and then distributed them through illicit computer networks that specialize in piracy, the Justice Department said.

Salisbury, who faces up to 17 years in prison, could not be reached for comment.

Entertainment-industry insiders and tech-savvy hackers use "warez" networks, as they're commonly known, to distribute movies, music and software for free, often before they're released to the public.

"The creative works of the entertainment industry belong to the millions of people who make them and are not for others to steal or unlawfully distribute," said Dan Glickman, head of the Motion Picture Association of America.

I must have missed it somewhere, but it takes millions of people to make a movie? To be more precise, it belongs to those millions? Wow, quite a bunch of shareholders. Anyway, why do they freak out about the camrips anyway? The quality usually is not the best; you see people walk around and the sound is messed up too. The people who watch a camrip and like the move usually want to watch it again in best quality, which means they either go to theatres or buy a DVD. The rest wouldn't buy anything anyway becaue they don't like the movie, so there's no loss.