Samantha Tumpach claims that she should not face the harsh punishment intended for bootleggers, because all she was doing is recording family members singing “Happy Birthday” to her sister in the theatre. Any footage of the movie screen was completely accidental, according to Tumpach.
I honestly don’t care about whether she was trying to bootleg the movie or not, I just plain think she should be jailed for considering a surprise birthday party at a showing of New Moon a wise idea. [Sun Times via Digg]
Photo by Squidoo
Oleg Estrin
Saturday, December 5, 2009 at 2:26 AMI don’t think she’ll go to jail, no jury will find her guilty! I think that the authorities are trying to make an example out of this case, to scare off the real pirates (probably isn’t going to work) so really she’s been made or is being made a scape-goat
Kristopher Lyons
Saturday, December 5, 2009 at 2:34 AM… I’ll be surprised if those 3 minutes of horrendus footage will end up on anyone’s ipod, There are probably already 100′s of better full versions of the movie(from launchday) available for illegal downloads that I’m sure are already on 1000′s of ipods.
mythblstr
Sunday, December 13, 2009 at 6:31 AMMuvico is the Theater that pressed charges. Muvico managers insisted that police arrest her. She could have spent 3 years in prison for felony pirating because she just taped 3 minutes of the movie during the birthday party. Fortunately the prosecutors in her county were grounded in reality and dropped the charges- no thanks to Muvico who wanted to prosecute because they get a small kickback from the RIAA for the prosecution.