Almost as if they are playing a game of “who is dumber,” a Virginia movie theater and 19-year-old student and underwear saleswoman Jhannet Sejas are going to battle soon in a criminal court. The theater, the Regal Ballston Common 12 in Arlington, called the police when Jhannet was spotted filming a portion of Transformers with a Cannon Power Shot camera. The cops arrested her and, because the theater is pressing charges, she faces a misdemeanor conviction and a year in the clink. The woman told the Washington Post that she only recorded 20 seconds of the movie to show her little brother who wanted to see the film. And it was her birthday for the love of Buddah.
I, frankly, don’t have a lot of sympathy for Ms. Sejas, although it seems like her only real crime was being an idiot. It’s probably true that she was recording the movie to show her little brother, but why? She claims he already wanted to see the film, so the usual excuse that stealing helps increase exposure for a product (a favorite of music thieves) is moot. Also, if you want to show him part of a movie to get him excited about it, show him readily available trailers. Why do something that everyone knows is against the law?
The Electronic Frontier Foundation thinks that Jhannet was a-ok in what she did. Their general counsel, Cindy Cohn, says the industry needs to “recognize that their audience isn't the enemy…they need to stop treating their fans like criminals.” That makes a lot of sense, except some of their audience is the enemy. Some of them are, in fact, criminals. Those thousands of bootleg DVDs don’t steal themselves. Who is going to decide which is which? The $6 an hour high school kid working as an usher who sees the video camera? I don’t blame the theater for calling the cops and I don’t blame the cops for pulling Jhannet out.
Where it gets a little stupid from the theater’s point of view is their unwillingness to let confiscation of her camera, forfeiture of her admission for the movie she was watching, and maybe a banning from their theater be the sum total of her punishment. There aren’t tons of these criminal prosecutions, so why try to make an example out of someone who most likely was not actually trying to steal the movie and sell it? It just makes the theater chain look dumb. Especially since no one is going to send her to jail for a year for this, so it will likely be a small fine, if anything.
It ain’t easy being creative. Lord knows I’ve tried and failed miserably many times. So I can see how cracking down on people stealing what you’ve worked hard to produce and distribute is a valid pursuit. Scaring the crap out of someone by having the cops pull her out of the theater was probably enough punishment. Save the big guns for someone you catch actually trying to steal a movie to sell.
