Free Republic

As if you needed another reason not to wear your dumb Google Glass in public—or ever, actually—an Ohio man claims he was yanked out of a movie theater and interrogated by federal agents, who believed he was illegally filming the movie with his face computer. The man’s full account is posted on The Gadgeteer, but we’ll summarize it here so you can get the gist of it before you’re engulfed forever in this ghastly winter storm. Last Saturday, our Glass-wearing protagonist and his wife went to a showing of Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit at an AMC in Columbus, Ohio. About...

A moviegoer caught secretly recording the sci-fi blockbuster "Transformers" has been charged with unauthorized use of a video camera in a theater in the first arrest under a new New York City law that stiffened penalties for pirating films. A criminal complaint accuses Kalidou Diallo of slipping a video recorder, video player and remote control into a sneak preview of the film at a Bronx theater Monday night. "This is the first time someone has been arrested and charged with the new illegal camcording law," City Hall spokesman Jason Post said Thursday. In May, Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed legislation that...

A 19-year-old movie theater cashier from Missouri faces eight years in prison after pleading guilty Monday in San Jose to copying first-run movies and uploading them onto the Internet, the U.S. attorney's office said. Curtis Salisbury, who worked in a St. Louis multiplex theater, admitted to recording "Bewitched" and "The Perfect Man" in June, and then uploading them to a site set up by FBI agents in Northern California. It was the first conviction under "Operation Copycat,'' an FBI sting operation designed to combat movie piracy. "Camcording movies in theaters and putting them on the Internet for distribution is a...

Feb. 28 issue - Dan Glickman isn't exactly the Hollywood type. More comfortable in pinstripes than Prada, he's a former Clinton Agriculture secretary, Kansas congressman and president of the Witchita school board—and nothing like the flashy, debonair Jack Valenti, the legendary head of the Motion Picture Association of America. After 38 years at the MPAA, Valenti has become a celebrity in his own right, landing his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. But as Glickman heads toward his first Academy Awards since taking over for Valenti as the industry's chief lobbyist, he's the one schmoozing Hollywood directors and...