In the first trial of its kind in the United States, a federal jury in Los Angeles recently convicted a 70-year-old retired painter of illegally bringing a camcorder into a movie theater to record "The Legend of Zorro."
The jury's decision against Manuel Sandoval was the first brought under the U.S. Family and Entertainment Copyright Act, a year-old law that gives prosecutors the ability to pursue charges against individuals who illegally copy movies or music. USA v. Sandoval, No. 06cr00054 (C.D. Calif.).
FECA, signed into law in April 2005, makes it a crime to upload a copyrighted work onto the Internet, and also makes it a felony, not just a misdemeanor, to copy a movie in a theater using a camcorder.
Also under FECA, prosecutors do not have a minimum value of copyrighted material in order to pursue a case, said Elena Duarte, chief of the cyber and intellectual property crimes section of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California. In the past, prosecutors were limited to bringing only those cases that involved at least $1,000 worth of copyrighted material.
Rodney D. Ryder
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