back to article Alleged pirate fingered for filming film at Harrow flicks

A man in North West London has been accused of fraudulently filming Hollywood movies at a Vue cinema and then distributing the wares illegally. Emmanuel Nimley, 22, of Lincoln Road in Harrow, allegedly filmed Jennifer Aniston’s latest fluffy vehicle, The Bounty Hunter, and other movies in the borough’s St George’s Shopping …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sounds like he's already been punished enough

    by sitting through a Jennifer Aniston movie

  2. Code Monkey

    Why?

    You've got to admire him. No way could I sit through an entire Jenifer Aniston movie, no matter how much money I could make off the knock-off DVDs.

  3. Sergie Kaponitovicz
    Thumb Down

    Local rag The Harrow Times was first to report this story yesterday. ®

    And you, desperate hack, were the second.

  4. Erroneous Howard

    Really...

    His biggest crime was to be watching a Jennifer Aniston film in the first place...

  5. Tom 35

    Alleged pirate

    How did he get his boat into the cinema?

    1. Goat Jam

      Obviously,

      It was a very small boat

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Lazy

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

    Well it is either illegal, in which case there are laws against it, or it is not in which case, he did nothing wrong.

    What they mean is that they have to go through the bother of proving that the guy actually broke the law. Tough shit: it's just the same for everyone else....

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      WRONG!

      "Well it is either illegal, in which case there are laws against it, or it is not in which case, he did nothing wrong."

      Fail, skelband, fail.

      Our legal system is not one of administrative certainty, but one of common law. Under a common law system it is seldom so simple as you seem to think. As such the courts must consider all applicable legislation and case law to decide whether he broke the law or not.

      "What they mean is that they have to go through the bother of proving that the guy actually broke the law."

      No they don't. It is not up to the movie industry to prove that he broke the law - it is up to the prosecution to do that. I suppose the movie industry could bring a private prosecution, but they have not done so in this case.

    2. Bryce Prewitt
      Thumb Down

      Wow.

      This post is almost as bad as that time you failed to completely comprehend how evil Google was. ;)

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    But...

    I'm sure this tat is already available online, why would anybody bother to film it?

  8. John Tserkezis

    No matter.

    We'll wait for the fifteen different versions of the clean DVD release, it'll STILL cost nothing, and we'll STILL be reminded that Hollywood can't actually make films anymore.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    oh dear...

    ... of all the films to get caught camming

  10. Michael 47
    WTF?

    In what way is it fraud?

    I fail to say how recording a film and then distributing it is fraud. Under the fraud act 2006 the definition of fraud is:

    "The Act provides for a general offence of fraud with three ways of committing it, which are by false representation, by failing to disclose information and by abuse of position"

    So are they claiming he abused his position as a cinemagoer? Or that he claimed to be selling legitimate copies? (and i'm sorry but no one could believe the bloke walking round the pub with a bag full of DVDs is selling legitimate copies)

    I'm not saying what he did is right, but trying to charge him with fraud just seems to be a way of inflating any sentence/penalties he receives. Selling bootleg DVDs is exactly the kind of thing existing copyright laws exist for, no need to add rediculous extra charges.

    Just WTF?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    Today there's no list for a video pass at a movie theatre?

    No?

    Unfriendly world. Perhaps with the true value of the monetary system known, it might be considered helping get the word out about these movies? I ran across stuff I could download, then I see it and buy it. I dunno, it seems in the big picture such a waste of a life to condemn someone at 22, he didn't murder anyone, he didn't pass any stolen us~al-quada message embedded in the movies..he simply likes the movies and thinks you should see and be enlightened too. Copyright laws are complex, it shouldn't be an excuse to slow or speed a trial to ruin a 22 yr old's life who probably could more than make up for it, if given a chance. I'd nullify the thing if I see it. I would nullify it and tell them you can't destroy a young man's life for this nonsense, the artist and the man ought to work something out fairly, and destroying one man over another is not fair, especially right now when nobody is doing well. Nor is dragging out a trial to suck the soul out or alternatively making a trial into a blink of time like a whack on the back of the head.

  12. Mectron
    FAIL

    Kill the demands for pirate movie.

    Slash the price of movie ticket by 75% (and they will still be about about 500% to expensive)

    Release the BD/DVD right away (again slashing the price by 75%)

    PROBLEM SOLVED. ho wait.....it will not work, the only viable business model of hollywood is EXTEROTION.

    1. Stuart Castle Silver badge

      A common misconception.

      Even if you reduce the price to nothing, people will still pirate it. When Radiohead released that album free, there were still pirate copies distributed.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        FAIL

        As I was reminded yesterday when I went to the cinema

        going to the Cinema means you pay for your ticket then sit in front of a heap of adverts for a while before the film finally comes on and disappoints (yes, I'm looking at you, Inception).

        Whereas when you pirate, you stick the DVD in your drive or load it up in the media player of your choice and you're straight into the movie. Worst case scenario all the usual rubbish is there but you can skip it- pirates don't bother locking down their videos to make you sit through adverts for Scooby Doo when you've got the room darkened and are waiting for The Dark Knight to start.

        Until the legitimate movie industry can match the pirates- or match a decent home TV and a darkened room for the "Cinema Experience" they'll have a pretty serious fight on their hands.

        1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

          A couple of points

          "Even if you reduce the price to nothing, people will still pirate it. When Radiohead released that album free, there were still pirate copies distributed."

          You cannot "pirate" a free thing and you could get the Radiohead thingy for free or for 1p if I remember correctly. So all the "pirates" did was saving them the cost of bandwidth.

          Anyway, there will always be natural seepage but if you make what consumers want (DRM-free, PUOPs-free good-quality disc) and price it reasonably the majority of consumers will pay the price and those who won't (but D/L and watch anyway) either don't have the cash (so are not potential customers) or are some eccentric nutcases (and also not potential customers).

          "Until the legitimate movie industry can match the pirates- or match a decent home TV and a darkened room for the "Cinema Experience" they'll have a pretty serious fight on their hands."

          They don't care about "piracy", especially this kind of "piracy" (camming) - it's negligible and has no impact on their sales. They also have absolutely no intention to match the pirate's prices or remove DRMs or other restrictions.

          In fact these industries are actively interested in continued existence of such "piracy" because it's an extremely useful PR tool, which helps them lobby politicians for legislation further infringing consumer rights and pulling the blanket on their side. And it also fools a lot of gullible public too.

          You see, they catch a hapless idiot with a camera, make a show trial out of it, commission a "study" which is not supported by any facts but will claim that he has singlehandedly lost for the industry some countless billions of pounds of revenue (and won't someone please think of the artists?) and then humbly suggest that they need to put more DRMs on your consumer products. Why? Because they need to protect their consumers from inadvertently breaking the law, of course!

          They need to stop you from inadvertently watching a wrong region disc in your BD player or ripping the content to watch it on your iPad/Phone/Pod/whatever or streaming it over your home network or using clips of the movies for your homemade hobby remixes and so on. Oh, and also this will help you to get used to the idea of "pay per play" which will be the ultimate goal.

          But it's all for your own protection - to protect you from breaking the laws which they have or will get passed and which will prop up their otherwise failing business model. And to get the laws passed nothing helps like having a good old "pirate" to hang out to dry.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Badgers

        no thats a confused issue

        radio heads free album... It wasn't because it was free that it was still distributed thru' pirate channels. Consider:

        Lack of marketing, so people didn't know it was available

        Ease of access - was RH down or slow

        Ease of download - using existing client software and indexing services

        It boils down to making sure people know it's available (for a free product the marketing budget is zero) and making it as widely available as possible; put it on a dozen mirrors, seed it on BT and post the magnet on PB/torrentfreak etc., upload it to megadownload, supershare, allyourbitsrus (\s) and then lastly to relevant nntp group. If you want to distribute for free and want people to know about it, then that's how you do it because millions upon millions of people actively look at the indexing sites.

        It wasn't pirated even though it was free, it was just easier to access via alternative routes.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Pint

      Free is all they understand

      Freetards will pirate anything in digital form! You can get the entire catlog of Oracle software for free from Oracle's website, the full SP not keys no licenses.

      I often see people punting Oracle RDBMS software on torrent sites with comments like, "Where's the license key?","No keygen?" and such like.

      If these people knew what Oracle was or how it worked they wouldn't asking these questions. They simply see software from big company X and simply want to pirate it and add to huge collections of shite!

      Free is the only these people understand, even if Hollywood did it all for nothing, these lowlifes would still rip it off. I neevr watch movies so I am not fussed what dross Hollywood puts out.

  13. wolfmeister

    eh???

    if that's what he was caught filming he should simply plead insanity

  14. Christopher W
    Paris Hilton

    Why do UK cammers even bother any more?

    First cams always come from Eastern Europe and have dodgy sound. If you can wait a few days or so, the DVD5s are always out with the line audio (love the irony of a crooked projectionist) but even THEN the quality ain't really up to snuff.

    I could never understand the appeal of watching what might be a good film with an EXTREMELY dodgy recording. Some cams I've witnessed in the past are hilarious bad. But then, I'm 100% 1080p now. MKVs anyone? (no weight on my conscience here, I gave AMC another £12 tonight to sit and watch The Expendables - and bloody good it was too).

    Cammers deserve to be locked up if they're stupid and brazen enough to continue doing a shit job. Moreso, they deserve to be mercilessly beaten in public by the police for attempting to profit from it. The history of the scene was always that nobody profited from it, it was done for enjoyment only. Whilst that in itself is a moralistic can of worms, and is to be deftly sidestepped this time around, the scumbags who try and flog binbags of £3 DVDRs down the local pub deserve to be taken out bag and summarily dealt with. Then exiled.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Not all are hilariously, or bad at all.

      Some cammers know their business. Also note the "[...] and then distributing the wares illegally." No inflated price tag to go with it means that he likely didn't sell a thing. It seems that having your morals dipped in hi-def affects reading skills too.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Happy

      "taken out bag"?

      Yeah I've done that couple of times in my youth, woke up in the morning next to them too, full of lager, peanuts and bad hangover. I wouldn't wish that on even the scum off the earth cammers!

  15. Richard Porter
    Coat

    "fingered for filming film at Harrow flicks"

    Why couldn't he have done it in Finsbury? (and you left out "fraudulently")

  16. Andus McCoatover

    "Harrow, Harrow,..

    Who's your lady friend??"

    God, that was bleedingly obvious!

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I've always wondered...

    I've always wondered what would happen if someone walked into a cinema with a large tripod and hand-operated film camera (circa-1920 style) and set the thing up in the aisle and proceeded to hand crank the camera (pointed at the screen) throughout the film.

    Would they see the funny side of it?

    Maybe it's time to bring back Candid Camera*.

    (* on second thoughts, maybe not)

  18. yoinkster
    Thumb Up

    Out of interest,

    please can El Reg complete the following sentence for us:

    "If found guilty, he faces up to ..."

    Ta. Quite interested in the potential punishments here as to me the crime is pretty minor but I'm sure the sentecing won't be on the same level. I'm going to guess the words "unlimited fine" sit in there somewhere :(

    1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

      I'm sure you are quite right

      After all, he is not some kind of common thief or murderer. He has infringed the *Intellectual Property Rights* (hallow be their names)!

  19. copsewood
    Big Brother

    being told to spy on our neighbours

    I remember going to see a film a couple of years ago and we were told to spy on other members of the audience. If they were seen secretly recording, we were supposed to report them to the copyright police. It reminded me of what my mum said everyone was told to do by the Nazis when she was a teenager in Germany.

    The similarity left a nasty taste in my mouth and left me less supportive of copyright policing than I was before I saw the film.

    1. Michael 47

      Obligatory reference

      Be A Government Informer.

      Betray Your Family And Friends.

      Fabulous Prizes To Be Won!

    2. Gav
      FAIL

      I call Godwin

      Watching someone in plain view in a public place is not "spying".

      Nor is asking someone who sees a crime taking place to report it anything like Nazi Germany. Most people would see it as part of being a responsible and social citizen.

      You may disagree with the fact that this particular act is a crime, but 'spying' and 'Nazi' it is not.

    3. No, I will not fix your computer
      Stop

      I agree..

      Telling the cinema that somebody is filming is identical to reporting neibours for subversive behaviour, which might end up with them being put to death.

      idiot.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Anyone for a sentence sweepstake, then?

    My bet: he has to watch TWO Jennifer Aniston movies

  21. Winkypop Silver badge
    Stop

    A Jennifer Aniston film...!

    The dastardly devil !!!!

    Distributing that shite IS a crime...

  22. John Greenwood 1
    Coat

    You want buy DVD?

    Student Project! Film film from back of cinema!

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