back to article Harrow flicks pirate thrown in slammer

A man from North-West London has been jailed for six months, after admitting to fraudulently filming Hollywood movies at a Vue cinema and then distributing the wares illegally online. Emmanuel Nimley, 22, of Lincoln Road in Harrow, used his iPhone to take fuzzy recordings of The Crazies, Alice In Wonderland and The Green Zone …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Vue Entertainment

    The company that wants to send its customers to prison.

    1. Rob 9

      yes.. for breaking the law.

      I have no problem with this at all and I don't see how you possibly could either. Regardless of what you think of pirating movies harming/not harming the movie companies, this is definitely harming Vue as it could potentially stop people going to the cinema to watch those films and if they aren't active in combatting piracy, the film companies might not sell them the films to show in the first place harming them further.

      Pirates are scum. End of.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Stop

        "Pirates are scum"

        Your children are probably pirates. As are all their friends.

        You might want to re-evaluate your opinion before going for the Daily Wail knee jerk reaction.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Yes.

      For theft.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        WTF?

        @ "Yes. For theft." AC

        Please explain exactly what this gentleman has stolen.

    3. peyton?

      No

      I'm pretty sure it was just the one customer.

    4. Tigra 07

      Arrrr, there be bad quality films!

      I got a pirate once and the quality was terrible.

      Poor quality video, sound, and people walking past constantly.

      For the £4 i paid i could have just waited a couple months and bought the DVD from blockbuster around the same price.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Boffin

      Well...

      he wasn't actually a very good customer, was he? I mean, his whole intent was to actually lose them more custom than he was giving them, wasn't it?

  2. Steve the Cynic
    WTF?

    Making illegal...

    ... that which is already illegal...

    What is it with governments, that they feel the need to make specific offences for actions that are already illegal?

    Bah. On my way.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    lol

    it's also a good example of why new law isn't necessary because the crimes are already covered by current law.

    There are two things I can never understand though

    1) Why bother making such low quality copies, unless he was getting paid?

    2) Why watch such terrible copies unless you're half blind?

  4. JakeyC
    Thumb Up

    Phil Clapp

    "The UK’s Cinema Exhibitors’ Association’s boss Phil Clapp applauded the sentencing"

    That bit of contrived nominative determinism made my day!

  5. Hermes Conran
    FAIL

    Meanwhile

    muggers get off with community sentences.

    Moral;

    Only steal from poor people.......

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Good Stuff!

    I'm all for them cracking down on this terrible practice.

    I hate it when you download a movie and it's a crap res! Much better to have the rips from reels rather than have the networks spammed up with low res camcorder versions.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      White Paper for New Bill

      I propose a new offence - Willful uploading of shit quality vids with intent to frustrate potential viewers

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Classic

    "...boss Phil Clapp applauded the sentencing."

    This one line is the main reason I keep coming back to this site. Love it !!

  8. David 45

    OTT

    This sentence seems extremely OTT. A jail term for what has got to be lousy vids? Just who would want to watch such low-quality junk in the first place? From the judge's comments, you'd think he murdered a dozen people!

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    and

    For once I agree with a representative of the UK film policing industry - there should be a separate offence for camcorder recording in cinemas.

    The quality is sh1te.

  10. JaitcH
    WTF?

    Judge John Anderson of Harrow Crown Court ....

    your annual pass good for one year for two people valid at any Vue movie house is in the mail.

    Free DVD's, too.

    What a troll. (Is that a Class B offence - on his record for 35 years:)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I just used

      The Car Key-Fob Blocker found in another post to rob Said Judge's tickets from his car!!

  11. Kevin Johnston

    No specific charge?

    "no specific legislation that can be used in a charge such as the one against Nimley"

    Odd that since it clearly says they are using the Fraud act. This would seem to be the perfect piece of legislation as I'm quite sure that deliberately recording the on-screen image with the intent to pass the result on to people knowing that you have no legal right to do so must cover just about every bullet point in the act. I suspect that it breaches the T&Cs of the ticket purchase at the cinema too which could bring it in under the Theft Act 'pecuniary advantage' bit. If you are going in with the intent of breaking the law then you may even fall into Trespass even if you have purchased a ticket. Etc etc etc

    All in all I would imagine that it is not that there is no existing legislation so much as the interested parties want their own special legislation that they can have stretched to fit anything else they think of regardless of the original intent.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Legal disadvantage

      Weren't "pecuniary advantage" et al repealed in 2006?

      The joy of being bound by an ever-changing legal landscape!

    2. Danny 14
      Go

      aye

      Maybe he was convicted under the fraud act for claiming he had an R5 rip whereas is was a shitty cam with crap sound.

      fair play, probably pissed a few people off using up rapidshare credits on a crappy release.

  12. TimNevins
    Thumb Down

    Six Months!

    Meanwhile MP's ,BT/Phorm and Reporters go scott free for phone hacking, illegal profiling and general expenses fraud.

    He didnt even make any money from it.

    As always the poor get punished and the rich get off scott free.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    This country is fucked!

    6 months for filiming a currently released film, yet you can get less for a serious assault.

  14. Cheapster
    Unhappy

    Should he not get a medal?

    Surely a fuzzy facsimile is art not theft.

    Or more likely a warning about the quality of the latest megacorp crap to be inflicted on the entertainment seeking public. Anyone watching two minutes of these films will avoid the multiplex, not because they have watched the whole thing but because they realise the waste of time that would be.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    Why oh why do we need titles?

    "Your action was a deliberate cheat on the film companies and the film industry. Fraudulently making and distribution of copies for whatever purpose and whatever quality has the effect of depriving the film industry of revenue."

    The reason it deprives the film industry of money is because you get a chance to see what a pile of toss something is before you get a chance to pay for it.

    I think cinemas should charge on exit, so if the film is good enough that you can bear to sit through the whole thing, you pay the full seat price. If however, it is a pile of crap and you can only tolerate a percentage of the running time, you pay for the percentage of the film you can be arsed to watch. The last 1/2 hour or so would have to be charged at full price I suppose.

    It would mean box office takings actually reflect whether people liked the film rather than how many were suckered into the cinema to be abused by vacuous storylines and cliched, formula production.

    It's been said a thousand times before but.... Every single CD, DVD and Blu-Ray I own has first been pirated (and very very occasionally seen at the cinema) before I went and bought them.

    I no longer pirate music at all, and consequently no longer buy any either except occasionally when a mate bungs me a copy of a cd & I like it.

    I don't think they should encourage piracy, but they should take a more pragmatic approach. Not every pirated copy is a lost sale and piracy can even generate sales when the quality of the product is high.

    yar

    1. Swoop
      Happy

      cinema refunds

      "I think cinemas should charge on exit, so if the film is good enough that you can bear to sit through the whole thing, you pay the full seat price. If however, it is a pile of crap and you can only tolerate a percentage of the running time, you pay for the percentage of the film you can be arsed to watch."

      Someone I know once walked out of a cinema part way through a particularly crap film and demanded his money back. The manager was obliged to comply because it turns out that if you leave before halfway through the film you are entitled to a full refund under British law.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Unhappy

        feck!

        I've walked out of loads of movies before the halfway point and never realised that :o(

        Independence Day

        Batman & Robin

        Spiderman 2

        Transformers

        being the most memorable.

  16. copsewood
    Flame

    Way over the top

    I could understand the sentence if he had _sold_ copies illegally rather than just shared them because he could. But I think this sentence will do the copyright extremists no good at all, by making Emmanual into a martyr, and making themselves even more disliked than they previously were. A hundred hours community service and a small fine might have been appropriate. As to asking us to spy on our neighbours in case they are secretly filming when I go to the flics, frankly the idea makes me feel sick.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Way over the top

      You do realize that reporting that idiot 2 rows back that is talking on their cellphone (mobile) for recording the film will be about the fastest way to get rid of them, right?

  17. Neil Greatorex
    Unhappy

    Good grief

    What is the world coming to, Daily Wail notwithstanding, is this offense seriously worth more jail time than ABH or a mugging?

    1. Nic 3
      Thumb Down

      context dear boy

      Context is everything.

      Each type of crime has a range of sentencing options detailed by sentencing guidelines. Unless you are privy to all the aggravating and mitigating facts in this crime and any you are comparing it to, you really are sounding more like the Daily Wail than you would like.

  18. BristolBachelor Gold badge
    Megaphone

    No more laws please

    ... complained that the UK government lags ... no specific legislation that can be used in a charge ...

    That would be a fair comment if it wasn't for the fact that people can obviously be prosecuted using existing laws, so no new law needed. Just like there is no specific law against punching someone in the right eye using your left fist while standing on one leg, because it isn't needed.

    We already have too many laws. We don't need any more, we need less.

    <climbs down from soapbox>

    1. Ted Treen
      Headmaster

      Pedantry alert!

      "We already have too many laws. We don't need any more, we need less."

      No, we do not need less.

      We DO need fewer.

      1. bluest.one
        Coat

        Pedantry Counter-Measure Deployed

        Technically, the rule is that if you can count them, it's 'fewer', if you measure them by mass/weight, it's 'less'.

        Given the number of laws that the Labour party imposed upon us during their reign of terror, however, I think referring to them by weight is probably more fitting. :)

    2. Grease Monkey Silver badge

      Laws?

      Strictly speaking we only have one law in this country.

      Honestly I did try to resist the temptation to be pedantic, but I couldn't do it.

  19. Michael 47
    WTF?

    Fraud?

    I remember reading about the trial on el reg a few weeks ago, and i wondered 'how could this be fraud?' I never thought this would end with a custodial sentence though. Scary. Could anyone with a little more legal knowledge than my humble self explain how making a dodgy copy of a film and putting on streaming site is fraud?

    Just WTF...Seriously

  20. Martin
    WTF?

    Six months?

    Yes, he should be punished. He knew what he was doing is against the law.

    But he made no money out of it. It's quite likely that the film company lost no money out of it. A few sad people watched a fuzzy copy of the movie, and would almost certainly have not bothered to see it at all if it had not been free on the internet.

    But six months in prison? Seems over the top to me.

    (Unless, of course, it's not his first offence...)

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    He deserves prison

    He used an iPhone ffs!

    At least pick something with a decent camera.

  22. TenDollarMan
    Coat

    Well done sir

    Mr Clapp applauded, did he? Of course he did.

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    Indeed

    "Your action was a deliberate cheat on the film companies and the film industry. Fraudulently making and distribution of copies for whatever purpose and whatever quality has the effect of depriving the film industry of revenue."

    Looking at the list of absolute fecking drivel at my local cinema, I'd be more concerned about subjecting today's youth to a diet of utter rubbish guaranteed to mess them up! Alice in Wonderland? Have shufty on Amazon and pick up a copy of the book for a quid and enjoy it far more! Even better find a PDF, I believe it's public domain now, so you should be entitled to read it for free!

  24. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    WTF?

    "has the effect of depriving the film industry of revenue"

    ...and we can't have that, can we?

    The only other institution that has a similar delusion of being entitled to hoover change from your purse must be State.

    1. Nic 3
      WTF?

      what the chuff...

      are you talking about?

      So the film industry are not entitled to charge for films they produce?

      I do hope you are troll

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Unhappy

        @Nic 3

        "So the film industry are not entitled to charge for films they produce?"

        Charging for their product is one thing, ruining someone's whole life is something else entirely.

  25. Naughtyhorse

    all this....

    for a poxy screener, whcih no one will D/L

    poor sod/dickead/hero of the revolution (delete inaplicable)

  26. Wolfe
    FAIL

    why arrest him

    OK so now when this guy gets out and tries to get a job ,& "CAN NOT" because when the companies see he was incarcerated for 6 months chances are he wont get the job . So did the judge really do anyone any justice in this case ? NO he ruins this kids life by putting a mark on his record that will be there for the rest of this kids life essentially basically making this kid a criminal for the rest of his life. I know the kid did it to himself the judge didn't do it to him . However the judge didn't have to put him in jail , What is gained by this . save jail for the murderers rapists and child molesters and the likes of those scum bags . Not some kid that paid his own way to see a movie then recoded it on his phone. He couldn't have gotten the entire movie on his phone. Thats just to much space for an I phone to handle "I Think". . I feel the judge was wrong because now this kid, wont be able to get a job I would expect him to do more of what he was convicted of if not out of spite then for money . Even though he didn't make any money the first time . He may now need to do it for the money "with a better quality camera I hope "!!, This judge should have used his noggin more in this case dont get me wrong , the kid broke the law he needs to be punished . i think community services would have worked a lot better for every one involved. Say have him clean the theater for 6 months every weekend & Donate his pay to charity of the the Movie companies choice. Or sentence him to 400 hours of teaching the elderly how to use a PC. anything like that . I bet if this kid broke into some ladies house rapped and robbed her he wouldn't have gotten this much jail time . It seems our government is more concern with protecting the Big Businesses than it is in protecting US people Bottom line. In the end We the people are going to end up picking up the tab for this kids life all because of one Judges bad decision!!! http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/graphics/icons/comment/fail_32.png

  27. David Barrett

    Ahh

    This maks some sense now, previously I have commented that its not really needed to ban phones/laptops from cinemas because the quality is so low..

    It would seem that some people just dont care and will watch a fuzzy mono copy of a movie to save a few quid..

  28. Matt 21

    Madness

    Given the other crimes and policing issues it seems a complete waste of time putting someone in prison for taking poor quality videos in a cinema. For goodness sake get a sense of perspective!

  29. Fuh Quit
    Thumb Up

    Good news! Another rogue off the seats....

    A1/V1 is simply unacceptable in today's world.

  30. Gweilo
    WTF?

    Fraud?

    Copyright infringement, okay.

    But how is it "fraud"? He was giving the videos away. They were bootlegs and everyone knew that. So there was no deception.

    The only mystery to me is why anyone would waste their time watching a videocammed movie, complete with background chatter, rustling sweet packets, fuzzy images... I've picked up a few in used DVD markets and never spent more than a minute watching them before ejecting and throwing it away. If you want a bootleg, wait a couple of weeks at most and get the Russian release.

    These videos aren't watched by anyone instead of buying the movie; it's just so people can say they were "first" to upload a video or make it available, and downloaders can get a taste of a new movie.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Fraud

      For fraud to take place there is no need to the fraudster (there's a lovely old fashioned word) to gain in any way from the fraud. So the fact that he gave away the videos is irrelevant.

  31. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Or...

    The company that wants to send criminals to prison?

  32. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    WTF? I thought we were supposed to be saving money?

    Why the hell is a judge allowed to spend taxpayers' money sending someone like this to prison?

    Assuming he'll be out in 3 months, that's 10K spent on locking someone up who clearly poses no threat at all to society. Why the hell didn't they just make him do community service?

  33. sT0rNG b4R3 duRiD
    Thumb Down

    6 months?

    While two wrongs don't make a right, I think this is far too much given the likes of people getting off for far less for more heinous crimes.

    Why is this so?

  34. Lghost
    Unhappy

    "a cheat on"

    "a cheat on" ? ..when I last lived in the UK ( over 20 years ago ) judges were usually able to speak grammatically correct English..

    So now you have chav judges ..eh ..

    Rumpole would be spinning in his grave..

  35. LinkOfHyrule
    WTF?

    WTF

    Jail time when no money was made from the "crime". I'm glad we live in a fair society! Meanwhile real crims, bankers and MPs who have actually profited from crimes, go about their business as normal!

    If I was him I would appeal sharpish as this is a miscarriage of justice. Clearly any normal person would see that!

This topic is closed for new posts.