Chicago student livestreams a movie premier on Facebook, gets arrested for piracy

Student Arrested in U.S. For Live Streaming a Movie During Premier on Facebook

A student has been arrested in Chicago for filming at a movie premiere and live streaming it on the Internet according to a BlueSky Cinemas. The student used his smartphone camera to live stream the movie premier on Facebook but the infringement was monitored by an anti-piracy outfit 8,200 miles away in India who alerted police in the United States.

Normally hackers use to make camera prints of movies using this technique. Later they upload such camera prints which are watched by millions of torrent lovers in absence of good quality rips. These hackers are usually caught by vigilant theater staff or annoyed theatergoers. In this case, unfortunately for the student, it was a piracy-monitoring service in India noticed the infringement and reported the same to the theater.

TorrentFreak reports that a Valparaiso University student allegedly was using his phone to live-stream the premiere of Indian film A Aa to anyone watching on Facebook, when police showed up and shut down his illegal broadcast.

Under the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act it is a criminal offense to record or broadcast a film from a movie theater.Bluesky Cinemas, the distribution company behind the film, says it was notified of the infringement by an anti-piracy monitoring firm in India.

After removing the live stream link from Facebook, the distribution company’s anti-piracy team contacted the Chicago cinema’s staff, who then called the police.In all, just a few minutes of the film were actually streamed, and according to Bluesky the content was successfully deleted from the Internet.

“[The] student was caught red-handed with [the] content,” Bluesky said in a statement. “Recording and sharing unauthorized video in social media is also a part of cybercrime.”

Media companies have gotten serious about copyright and piracy issues since the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act was enacted. HBO, which has a mega serial, Game of Thrones Season 6 going on air every has enlisted anti-piracy partner IP Echelon to issue thousands of copyright infringement warnings to ISPs, urging them to take action against alleged pirates.

However the police have denied BlueSky’s statement. Commander Gregory Nazuka of the Rosemont police department informed Fortune that no arrest was made. According to him the theater owner merely filed a police report online.

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