Forums: Recording Industry Association Of America

Simon Glik, the attorney who last year forced the First Circuit Court of Appeals to affirm that recording police in public is not a crime, will receive a $170,000 settlement from the City of Boston, stemming from his 2007 arrest for recording police in a public park. Even though criminal charges against Glik were quickly dismissed, it took five years to settle the case because police were seeking qualified immunity in making unlawful arrests, which would have protected them from such lawsuits. Obviously, they were under the impression that the long-standing legal principle of ignorance of the law excuses no...

The Illinois House killed a bill Wednesday that would have allowed citizens to make audio recordings of police officers in public places. Video recordings without sound already are legal in Illinois. “Citizens are unfortunately being charged under this current law for doing nothing more than what we already do every day, which is to take out our cell phone, open up the camera, and start recording," said the sponsor of House Bill 3944, Rep. Elaine Nekritz, D-Northbrook, The bill failed on a 45-59 vote. As a result, Illinois remains a “two-party consent” state when it comes to wiretapping. This means...

A Cook County judge today ruled the state’s controversial eavesdropping law unconstitutional. The law makes it a felony offense to make audio recordings of police officers without their consent even when they’re performing their public duties. Judge Stanley Sacks, who is assigned to the Criminal Courts Building, found the eavesdropping law unconstitutional because it potentially criminalizes “wholly innocent conduct.”

With the constitutionality of Illinois' eavesdropping law already facing several court challenges, a Democratic state representative from Northbrook has filed a bill that would allow people to audio-record a police officer working in public without the officer's consent. "I believe that the existing statute is a significant intrusion into First Amendment rights, so with the prosecutions and the court cases that have been reported about, it just seemed that this is a problem in need of a swift solution," Rep. Elaine Nekritz said in an interview Thursday. Illinois' eavesdropping law is one of the strictest in the country and makes...

Supreme Court OKs Use of Video Recorders in Homes 5-4 Decision in Copyright Case: The Supreme Court Jan. 17 ruled, 5-4, that the noncommercial home use of video cassette recorders did not violate the federal Copyright Act of 1976. The decision in Sony v. Universal City Studios had been one of the most eagerly awaited of the current high court term. According to the video industry, an estimated 10% of U.S. households had VCRs, with about eight million machines in use at the end of 1983. VCR sales in 1984 were expected to be over five million. The ruling was...

An Illinois judge ruled the state’s eavesdropping law unconstitutional as applied to a man who faced up to to 75 years in prison for secretly recording his encounters with police officers and a judge. “A statute intended to prevent unwarranted intrusions into a citizen’s privacy cannot be used as a shield for public officials who cannot assert a comparable right of privacy in their public duties,” the judge wrote in his decision dismissing the five counts of eavesdropping charges against defendant Michael Allison. “Such action impedes the free flow of information concerning public officials and violates the First Amendment right...

TAMERA MEDLEY begged the police officer to stop slamming her head - over and over - into the hood of a police cruiser. Thinking they were helping, passers-by Shakir Riley and Melissa Hurling both turned their cellphone video cameras toward the melee that had erupted on Jefferson Street in Wynnefield, they said. But then the cops turned on them. Riley had started to walk away when at least five baton-wielding cops followed him, he said, and they beat him, poured a soda on his face and stomped on his phone, destroying the video he had just taken. Meanwhile, two officers...

Michael Allison, a 41-year-old backyard mechanic from southeastern Illinois, faces up to 75 years in prison for an act most people don’t realize is a crime: recording public officials. Allison lives in Bridgeport, Illinois, and often spends time at his mother’s house in Robinson, one county to the north. Both towns have abandoned property (or “eyesore”) ordinances prohibiting the parking of inoperable or unregistered vehicles on private property except in enclosed garages. These rules place a substantial burden on hobbyists like Allison; to obey the law he must either build a garage—which he says isn’t an option, given his property...

There’s been a misconception in the media lately about it being illegal to videotape cops in three states; Maryland, Massachusetts and Illinois. That’s not exactly true. In Massachusetts, it is illegal to secretly record anybody without their consent, but there is no law against openly videotaping anybody in public with or without their consent, including cops. In fact, charges have been dropped against people who have been arrested for videotaping cops in public in Massachusetts. In Maryland, state police and a certain prosecutor treat it as if it is illegal but another state attorney as well as the attorney general...

The debate over whether citizens should be permitted to record on-duty police officers intensified this summer. High profile incidents in Maryland, Illinois, Florida, Ohio, and elsewhere spurred coverage of the issue from national media outlets ranging from the Associated Press to Time to NPR. Outside the law enforcement community, a consensus seems to be emerging that it’s bad policy to arrest people who photograph or record police officers on the job. The Washington Post, USA Today, the Washington Examiner, The Washington Times, and Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds, writing in Popular Mechanics, all weighed in on the side that citizen photography and...