Prison for camming – a UK first

Emmanuel Nimley, 22, yesterday received a 6-month sentence for filming movies with his iPhone at The Vue cinema in Harrow and uploading them to silverscreen.com. His motive: self-glory. The Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) say this is the first-ever UK prison sentence for ‘camming’.

In the US, cammers are prosecuted under the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005 – e.g. ‘the Dark Knight’ got 2 years – but the UK does not have a specific provision for this offence. According to TorrentFreak, Nimley had been charged under the Fraud Act 2006 (ss. 6 and 7) and section 107 (1)(e) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

‘Nicholas Bull, defending,’ the Mail reported, ‘asked the judge to take into account the amateur quality of his client’s work: “The camera was unstable. It was audible my client was drinking and eating throughout at times it was tilted up to view the top of the cinema.”’