Will You Be Arrested The Next Time You Bring Your Camera Phone To The Movies?

Legal Issues

from the not-so-smart dept

Rethink Research is taking on the new California law (which Hollywood is hoping to go national) which makes it a crime to have any type of video camera in a movie theater. As they point out, this is criminalizing the potential tools for a crime (which have plenty of legitimate uses) and not the crime itself. The law will allow people to make citizen’s arrests, so if you happen to pull out your camera phone to answer a call in the lobby of a movie theater, prepare to be tackled by random people around you eager to throw you in jail for “stealing from American creativity.” The article also makes the very important point that none of this will do anything to stop people sharing movies online – since the vast majority of them are clearly ripped from DVDs or other sources, rather than recorded live in the theater. This is just the latest in a long line of people over reacting to new technologies.