Theater piracy law snags first victim
Oct 11, 2005 8:00 AM, Strategic Content Management e-newsletter
A new federal law aimed at discouraging camcorder-equipped movie pirates has snared its first catch. Federal prosecutors said Curtis Salisbury, 19, pleaded guilty to using a camcorder to record movies in a St. Louis, MO, theater and distributing his recording on the Internet, CNET reported.
When Salisbury worked in the box office of a theater, he and others entered the projection booth after-hours and used a camcorder and audio recorder to tape “The Perfect Man” and “Bewitched” in June, according to the plea agreement. Sentencing is scheduled to take place in a San Jose, CA, federal court Feb. 27.
Salisbury appears to have been the first person prosecuted under the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act, which Congress approved in April in an effort to curb online piracy. One section of the law stipulates that any person who uses an “audiovisual recording device” to tape a movie in a theater can be fined up to $250,000 and imprisoned for up to three years. The charge of Internet distribution could carry additional punishment.
Although the Department of Justice wasn’t divulging many details, a representative of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California said Salisbury was caught as part of an undercover operation being conducted in the San Francisco area. That investigation, called Operation Copycat, resulted in indictments against four men this summer. Salisbury’s recordings, among others, were transmitted to servers in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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