Muvico Must Hate Its Customers

I hate it when movie theaters put a message on the screen where they threaten to prosecute us for using a recording device. I understand they want to prevent people from copying movies, and I don’t plan on any bootlegging, but I don’t like doing business with places that treat me like a criminal.

Since a taping incident doesn’t hurt a theater directly very much, I wondered if the message was just a requirement passed along from the distributor. Or were they really serious?

At the Muvico theater in Rosemont, Illinois, they’re apparently serious about it. Viciously and stupidly serious, as 22-year old Samantha Tumpach found out last weekend:

Taping three minutes of “Twilight: New Moon” during a visit to a Rosemont movie theater landed Samantha Tumpach in a jail cell for two nights.

Now, the 22-year-old Chicago woman faces up to three years in prison after being charged with a rarely invoked felony designed to prevent movie patrons from recording hot new movies and selling bootleg copies.

But Tumpach insisted Wednesday that’s not what she was doing — she was actually taping parts of her sister’s surprise birthday party celebrated at the Muvico Theater in Rosemont.

…

Managers contacted police, who examined the small digital camera, which also records video segments, Cmdr. Frank Siciliano said. Officers found that Tumpach had taped “two very short segments” of the movie — no more than four minutes total, he said.

Tumpach was arrested after theater managers insisted on pressing charges, he said.

I understand the need to protect intellectual property, but this is ridiculous. Copyright is usually a matter of civil law, so taking it to the level of felony criminal charges should only be necessary to punish blatant piracy of intellectual property such as a DVD forgery operation.

It’s also pretty asinine of the theater management to press charges in a case like this. I’m guessing that Ms Tumpach and her friends won’t spending any more money at Muvico in Rosemont. Neither will lots of other people If this story gets around.

FYI, here’s the Muvico contact page.

(Hat tip: Consumerist via Balko)

Update: Here’s my email to Muvico:

Dear Sir or Madam,

I’ve always been disturbed by the now-common warnings against using a recording device in theaters. I understand why recording is wrong, but I don’t appreciate spending good money in your establishment for tickets and snacks, and then being treated like a potential criminal.

Now I read in the Chicago Sun-Times that the Muvico I go to in Rosemont is pressing charges against a young lady for recording  a few minutes of the latest Twilight movie while playing around with a cheap little camera. That’s just crazy. Your theater manager has no sense of proportion—What’s next? Prosecuting customers for littering if they don’t throw away their empty popcorn buckets?

I guess he (or she) also has no sense of the value of customers to the theater business. There are lots of other theater choices in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. I don’t have to go to Muvico, and I don’t think I will.

— Mark Draughn