A 22-year-old woman from Chicago recently spent two nights in jail and could face up to three years in prison for taping less than four minutes of the new movie Twilight: New Moon.

Samantha Tumpach and family threw her sister a surprise birthday party at the theater and captured much of it on video. Unfortunately, two "very short segments" were enough to make theater managers want to press charges. "Tumpach insisted she recorded no more than three minutes while in the theater — and said not all of the video she shot was of the movie. There's footage of [Tumpach] and her relatives singing to her sister, she said. 'We sang "Happy Birthday" to her in the theater,' Tumpach said. She also took pictures of family members in the theater before the film began, but an usher who saw the photo session never issued them a warning, Tumpach said."

http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/1916606,twilight-taping-arrest-movie-120209.article


...she's lucky they aren't charging her for singing "Happy Birthday" without paying royalties too.

ohno: How stupid.

This story is stupid. Only four minutes of the movie were filmed and probably the video of the birthday party would have stayed within the family. I don't think the family was intending to bootleg a movie.

Hope she sues the theatre.

She should've been more careful with her camera - especially in a movie theater. When I worked in a movie theater, people weren't allowed to go in with cameras (I'm sure that plenty smuggled them in anyway in purses, etc.). I know it was only 4 minutes and she probably didn't intend to sell her filming, but still...

I don't feel she was wronged here, even if she filmed only a short portion, it's not legal to film even a second of what is on the screen. There has been so much talk about piracy and people getting in trouble for it, she should have known better. She's an adult.

Wow...