Hollywood's looking for bootleggers

Do you know any kids who are taking videocams to the movies they go to? If so, they need to be aware of the legal and ethical implications. The former just got a lot more tangible this week. The US movie industry is now offering movie theater employees rewards of up to $500 for every person they catch recording films in their theaters and report to the police, Reuters reports. The Motion Picture Association of America has decided that the vast majority of bootlegged films that turn up on the Internet for free downloading (via file-sharing networks like Kazaa) are from video cameras recording in theaters. "Overseas labs then use the pirated films to create illegal DVDs, which are distributed en masse on street corners around the world," according to Reuters. And that cost the film industry about $3.5 billion last year, according to the MPAA.