Sneaking into a movie: theft or mooching? (long)

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m sorry this is so long – it’s actually a condensed version of a debate I had with a coworker yesterday. I’m curious to see what the general opinion on the matter is.

Cheap Coworker (hereafter CC) has Tuesday/Wednesday as his days off. CC does not have airconditioning in his home. CC’s favorite method of coping with the extremely hot & humid days this past summer was to go to matinee showings of movies. Which is fine, but when the movie he paid to see ended, instead of leaving the theater he goes to the bathroom, then goes to the snackbar and buys some food, then he casually strolls over and reenters a different theatre and watches another movie. He checks the starting times of the various movies before he begins his activities, so he knows which theater has a show that has started not long before – this lets him see most of the movie AND makes it reasonable that he’s just come out to pick up chow before settling down for the show. He says that if times match up right, sometimes he can repeat this and see THREE movies for the price of one admission.

I call this stealing.

He insists that it may be legally wrong, but that he is hurting no one, and in fact, is benefiting the theater owner. His argument goes like this:

  1. The movie is being shown regardless of his being there. It has zero impact on the film’s wear and tear or use of electricity/equipment wear/employee work/whatever if there are 150 empty seats in the theater or only 149. (He says except for the first couple of weeks of a ‘kiddie draw’ movie, he has never seen a weekday matinee showing that didn’t have hundreds of empty seats.)

  2. All the money from ticket sales go to the studios, so not having sold him a ticket has no effect at all on the theater owner’s take. (I don’t know if this is true, though I’ve heard it before from others.)

  3. On the other hand, the theater DOES get the money from the snack bar, and by staying those extra hours he buys more food at highly inflated prices, and thus the theater owner takes in more money if he ‘steals’ the movie showing than if he left as he was supposed to.

My counterargument to this point: okay, he buys more food for the second (and third) movies, but I doubt it’s AS MUCH as he would have bought if he’d seen each movie individually on two (or three) different days. I mean, this guy is BIG (in the tall, wide and solid sense, not rolypoly) and I bet he buys the tub’o’popcorn and a barrel’o’beverage for the first show, but a second and third in the same afternoon?

CC admitted he didn’t buy more popcorn & soda, but said they made an equivalent amount off the candy bars or nachos or whatever he does get. But, he said, since most of the time the ‘stolen’ movies were ones he’d never pay to see in the first place (chosen as they were for starting time rather than interest), the theater owner is ahead on the food he does purchase and has no offsetting loss since he wouldn’t come to see that movie for its own sake, and thus there would never be any ‘first round’ sales.

And he uses the same argument for why the movie studios aren’t losing anything: whether he sneaks into a showing or not, they were never going to be able to sell him a ticket.

At one point he likened what he did to ‘dumpster diving’ behind restaurants: nobody wanted to pay for that food, so it’s worthless, and so it hurts no one if he takes it. Nobody wanted to pay for that seat during that screening, so it’s worthless, and again he is taking only trash.

I still say he is taking something that was supposed to be sold without paying for it, and that’s theft. Even if he doesn’t enjoy the movie (and, really, did you ever get your money back from a theater because it turned out you didn’t enjoy the movie you went to??) he is gaining the pleasure of a comfortable seat in an airconditioned room – surely that is part of what the movie goes is paying for, too.

But…I couldn’t seem to come up with arguments he couldn’t counter.

So, what say you, Dopers? Is CC a flatout thief or is he right about being more like a ‘moocher’ or ‘trash picker’?

2

I’d call it theft. If he were to get caught, and he used this explanation, does he seriously think he’ll get away with it?

I’m curious of how he can pull this off though. Does he go to different theatres every time? Because if he does this frequently, and the same place, the people who work there aren’t exactly stupid and do recognize people. Also, if there aren’t a lot of people milling about in the theatre, he’ll definately be noticed when he comes out of one film, go into the washroom, and then head to a different film.

Oh yes, ticket checks still happen nowadays and if one day, a check happens, he’ll be so screwed.

Stealing is stealing. The least he can do is admit it. :rolleyes:

3

He has not paid to see the movie, so he is stealing from someone.

Then he has stolen twice.

And the theater then takes a loss on that. However, let’s suppose he goes to a film that is being watched by a lot of people. It’s sold out. He gets there and claims a seat. Someone is turned away and the theater accordingly loses money.

Even if it is true, he’s still stealing, just not from the theater.

And I’ll likely never buy ammo for a .45-millimeter firearm. My stealing such from the seller harms said seller.

When in fact this is rubbish. Commercial companies that pay for their trash to be hauled away (and I’m not presently aware of one that does not pay) often pay per ton. By taking stuff from said dumpster I (hypothetically speaking) am actually doing said company a favor (however small) by taking their trash for no price. By contrast, theaters do not have to pay someone to haul away their empty seats after a showing.

Regardless of how much food he buys, he is still stealing. Regardless of who loses out, it’s still theft.

4

theft

His arguments are moral based and certainly little of any harm is being done but theft is not about how much harm is being done. If you walked into my garage and took an old bicycle that hasn’t been ridden in 20 years and is just rusting away you are still stealing even if you are doing no real harm to me, hell you may even save me hassle and dumping fees if I wanted to dispose of it. You still have no right to take it.

His ticket price paid for admission to one movie, the other one or two are stolen.

5

What about the company that does the hauling and has part of the load ripped off? Nobody is saying the movie dude or the dumpster diver is evil or even in any way bad in the case of the dumpster diver but it is still theft of a sort no matter how it is justified. Whether you can live with being a thief in this manner is a personal decision, calling it mooching makes no real difference.

6

He’s no different then the scum who illegally download music through filesharing. It’s theft, pure and simple.

7

Gee, sounds like the same arguments of those who download copyrighted songs from the Internet without paying for them.

It’s theft.

8

Theft. Petty theft that may conceivably benefit the theatre, but still theft.

9

I’m sick and tired of theft being expanded beyond its original meaning in order to demonize certain people. This is what theft means:

to take the property of another without right or permission.

If you sneak into a movie theater, you are trespassing, but you are not thieving.

10

No. It’s copyright infringement.

11

This is false. Movie theatres make most of their money from concessions, but not all of it. Your friend is making up a bunch of bullshit excuses to justify behavior he knows is wrong but wants to keep doing anyway because it’s convenient.

Blalron: I would say that buying a ticket to a movie is, in a sense, a contract. By purchasing it, you gain the right to view the movie in the theatre. What is this if it isn’t stealing? Tresspassing, fine, but that doesn’t convey the fact that he is getting the service (seeing the film) without paying for it.

12

As Blalron mentioned, it’s certainly not theft, though it is trespassing. Theft is when you deprive the rightfull owner of a good of the use of that good. Since this hasn’t occured, no theft has occured. However, since your right to watch a movie is conditional upon having purchased a ticket, he definitely is trespassing.

13

Marley23: I suppose you could try calling it Copyright Violation, since your license to view the content is conditional upon having bought a ticket, but that’s a stretch. Getting something for nothing isn’t illegal, depriving the owner of something is. In this case, the argument that you’re depriving the owner of control has already been more directly handled by the trespassing charge.

14

Tell your friend that if he makes his own sandwiches and buys candy from the store and sneaks it in, he will save even more money.

15

Your friend’s argument is flawed because he’s applying an incorrect criterion. Whether or not anyone is getting financially hurt is not the point - either legally or ethically. The point is that the movie industry’s business model (spanning the people who make movies and the people who exhibit them) is based on a contract: you pay the price of admission and you obtain the right to view one movie on one occasion (unless stated otherwise). Your friend is violating this contract, and he knows it.

I’ll leave it to others to argue about whether this behaviour might most accurately be classed as theft, trespass or some other crime - that’s the kind of thing lawyers get paid to argue about. The crucial point is that he’s trying to obtain for nothing something which he knows he is meant to pay for.

Mind you, and I say this mostly tongue in cheek, I can’t quite bring myself to condemn him 100%. There have been many times when I’ve felt the movie-makers and theatre-owners are equally guilty of violating the contract, in that they lure me in to see a movie under false pretences (e.g. snazzy trailers for appalling movies, misleading advertising, general hype about crud).

I guess it was inevitable that someone would offer a flawed comparison with ‘file sharing’. I’m not defending Napsterish activity, but the comparison is seriously flawed and doesn’t help address the OP.

16

Okay, so we can all agree that it is illegal, but is it immoral?

Imagine you are an omniscient being and you are presented with two different universes, one in which the guy went to see the movies and one in which he didn’t. which universe would you pick to be the “better” one if you wern’t aware before hand which was which?

Im having a hard time imagining the total amount of “hurt” that this guy has done that would offset his gain of air-conditioning for the afternoon. Possibly the fact that ticket sales would be lower which would give the movie a more limited release than it already does.

I like the dumpster diving example, it may be illegal but its win-win.

17

Theft can also be when you obtain a service without paying for it. Check the NYS Penal Law under “Theft of services”, which specifies, in part, that a person has committed theft of services when “with intent to avoid payment of the lawful charge for admission to any theatre or concert hall… he obtains or attempts to obtain such admission without payment of the lawful charge therefor”

18

I wouldn’t call it theft. The key facet of theft is that one party has to be unfairly deprived of property. Please, all you folks rolling your eyes, explain how the theater is being deprived of their property. I think the poster who called it trespassing was closer to the mark; the dude hasn’t been given permission to be on the premises (well, in the auditorium part) by the owner.

This is not to say that I necessarily agree with the ethics involved, but I wouldn’t call it theft.

19

It would be the same as if I snuck into somebody’s house when they weren’t looking, sat down and watched the television that was already on. I’m not even stealing electricity, since the exact same amount of electricity would have been used whether I was there or not.

I could get arrrested and charged with trespassing. If the prosecution tried to charge me with theft, I’d rightfully point out that I haven’t taken anything away from the owner, and the theft charges would be dismissed.

20

To classify theft this way labors under the assumption that the offender would have payed if he couldn’t have gotten it for free.

I understand why some might want to assume it’s that way, but morally speaking it is NOT the same as taking money from the cash register.