Most theaters and restaurants and many businesses in my neighborhood have a sign saying that management reserves the right of admission. No one complains about this, and no law is involved

Now, jumping from the traditional rights business have to making undesirable behavior a criminal act is something else.

Surely a drunk who is bothering other customers should be expelled from a theater, restaurant r whatever. But criminilizing nuisance behaviour is a very serious matter, and is best not done, least of all for the purpose of doing a favor to the filmakers from other countries, unless we want half the population in jail.

Rafael Venegas
gvenegas.com

I wrote about the camcordering issue in a recent BLOG article:

USTR 2007 Special 301 Report: accepting the good while rejecting the bad.
http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/3910

“While I don’t agree with the focus on camcordering in theaters, I believe that we do need laws to more generally help business and private owners to disallow recording devices. The City of Ottawa owned pools have signs as you enter the change rooms prohibiting the use of recording devices, and strong legislation to punish anyone who breaks this privacy-protecting rule should exist. The same law that protects the privacy of people in change rooms can also be used to protect the interests of copyright holders. Copyright holders would have a ban on recording devices within theaters as part of their contract with the theaters, and the theaters would have a strongly legally protected right to ban recording devices from their theaters. We historically had laws prohibiting “wiretapping” which needs to be expanded to include all recording devices (Video is seen by citizens to be more personal than audio) and not be limited to only the government (private-sector infringement of our rights is still an infringement of our rights). We don’t need every tool that a copyright holder might use to protect their rights to be embedded in the copyright act. This only bloats an already excessively complex act that needs to have “clarifying and simplifying the Act” put as a primary goal of any amendments changes.”

Cause if it is illegal why bother with the hassles of buging us about it.

BAN BREAD!

Fertilizer causes terrorism.

Motor vehicles cause traffic deaths.

Flatware, food, and plates cause obesity.

Guns and knives cause murder.

Scientists cause disease in laboratory animals (This one is true).

Yippee, is the government going to ban all of these too?