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That's it, sue your customers, especially those who just might be your unpaid marketing department. I know one theater I won't be patronizing.

And where is the libertarian William Kunstler when we need him? How about Christopher Garvey, a libertarian patent lawyer at Nolte, Nolte & Hunter?

Uh, I don't think so. I ran into Chris this evening at the monthly Junto meeting , where Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal spoke. He will be in for a shock to the system when he reads Against Intellectual Monopoly , which he is now aware of.

I got Chris's firm wrong, it's Collard & Roe, P.C.

You do know that this is all fitting perfectly into place don't you?

The cabal of copyright abolitionists deep inside Hollywood (who, unfortunately, believe the ends justify the means) realised that they need to manufacture a confrontation between perfectly benign, innocent, and harmless act (making a lofi recording of a snippet of a movie) and their new federal crime of using a video camera in a movie theatre, that makes corporate fraud at Enron pale into insignificance.

Either you believe MPAA are stupid and enjoy the squeals of pain coming from folk in the 'feet department', or you know they're incredibly intelligent and ultimately fully aware of the urgent need to get rid of the grievous social and cultural harm caused by copyright.

I think you'll find it's the latter, but they know everyone will believe the former.

I don't commend their strategy, but it will expedite copyright's abolition.

Anyone could predict that mobile phones would soon have video cameras rather than still cameras. So, this is why they hastily rushed the completely unnecessary movie theater law, precisely because it would make a perfect cause celebre of the inescapable conflict between cute citizen and callous corporation "Sorry sonny, but your liberty to share and build upon your own culture was suspended by the founding fathers for our exclusive benefit and commercial entitlement. Did you learn nothing in school?".

They are probably also hoping for the next step: Everyone gets their movie cameras out in the cinema.

I fear they may overestimate the amount of spunk in the American people.

They may need to contrive even more ridiculous confrontations, e.g. confiscate children from their families for sharing Disney DVDs or something whacked out like that.

I still wouldn't be surprised if the parents visited them at the foster home and berated them for ignoring the FBI warning at the start of the DVD.

Hello? America, land of the free? Does anyone remember that 'free' isn't necessarily a commercial term for a promotional offer?

I think it's time to disconnect the dynamo from Thomas Paine and resurrect him.