Digital Camera + Movies = Jail Time for Teen?

Where a teen goes, often goes a phone and a digital camera. Even to the movies, it seems. But teens who are at ease recording the many moments of their lives need to be well versed in copyright law.

A 19-year-old Virginia teen on a movie date to celebrate her birthday was arrested after unthinkingly recording about 20 seconds of the movie "Transformers" to show her 13-year-old brother, according to the Washington Post. She was charged with illegally recording a motion picture, and the Regal Cinemas is pressing ahead with the suit. She faces up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine for recording the 20-second segment.

It was wrong, clearly, to record any of the movie, and it was not a smart move. But for the theater company to move ahead with this particular lawsuit to prove the industry's zero-tolerance policy is equally ridiculous. As Cindy Cohn, general counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, tells the Post, the motion picture industry needs to stop treating fans like criminals. Sejas, a Marymount University student, was actually promoting the movie, not stealing it.

The Post reports that pirating movies costs the motion picture industry $18.2 billion a year, and 90 percent of illegally distributed films are recorded by camcorders, according to the Motion Picture Industry of America. But Sejas recorded seconds of the movie with a Canon PowerShot, her boyfriend's sister's digital camera. Even if that short clip made it onto the Internet, it is difficult to see how it could enrich Sejas.

Either way, warn your teens to keep the cameras off and away when at the movies. Or they may find a police officer beckoning them from their seats and into a legal mess.

LINK: Out of the Theater, Into the Courtroom [Washington Post]