Man charged for videoing film in cinema on his mobile phone
Thursday, December 18, 2014 @ 9:34 AM
THE first-ever sentence against an individual for videoing a film on his mobile phone in the cinema has been passed in Menorca.
A court in the island's capital, Mahón (Maó) reveals that a young man from nearby Sant Lluís was caught by cinema staff last October using his phone to record an entire film at the Ocimax cinema in the former city – and that he had already been arrested on two previous occasions for the same offence.
Police seized his phone and, after examining this and the footage, concluded that the model was sophisticated enough for him to have been able to copy it onto DVD or save it as a file on a programme such as Windows Media and then sell it on.
The images recorded were of impeccable quality, very close to that of a legitimate DVD film sold in the shops.
Officers concluded that he intended to profit from the films made by selling them as pre-releases, which breaks copyright laws.
The accused was charged with a civil, rather than criminal offence, since he had not yet made any money from selling copies of the films.
He was sentenced to six days of being 'tagged' by the court so his whereabouts could be traced at any moment, had his mobile phone confiscated permanently, was ordered to pay legal costs involved in the case, and banned from going inside any cinema for four months.
Although this is the first time a person has been punished by a court for filming inside a cinema, it is the latest in a string of copyright convictions involving intellectual property.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com