FIRST of all let’s qualify this thing. There is no way I would sit in a cinema and illegally record a film (too generally law-abiding/cowardly). Further, I am unlikely to ever watch Fast And Furious 6.

Having sorted that out, let us consider a story that caught my eye in the weekend newspapers.

Philip Danks, 25, from Wolverhampton, has just begun a prison sentence for recording this Hollywood film in a cinema on its release date in May last year. He then uploaded the movie and sold copies on his Facebook page.

Now you might think that only a fool would wish to buy such a badly copied film. After all, won’t the back of people's heads feature in the illicit footage? Also, the soundtrack could well include an added layer: the incessant munching, rustling and slurping that goes on in cinemas nowadays, thanks to many people’s inability to last two hours without eating or drinking.

Yes, only a fool would do that. Sadly, 700,000 such fools downloaded the film from Danks’s Facebook page, where he offered it for sale at £1.50.

Now I have no wish at all to defend Danks. But what makes this story interesting is the prison sentence he was served. How long do you think such an offence warrants? The answer, according to Wolverhampton Crown Court, is 33 months. That’s nearly three years for a copyright infringement – a bold and stupid infringement, it is true, but it still sounds like a draconian sentence.

Danks was trapped in part through his own stupidity. He visited a dating website called Plenty Of Fish on which he bragged about what he had done. He didn’t use his own name (not that dumb), but reportedly resorted to the same online name he had used when offering the film for sale. He was caught in the web in more ways than one.

When arrested, Danks contacted TorrentFreak, a website which, in its own words, is dedicated “to bringing the latest news about copyright, privacy and everything related to file-sharing”. He told the website that the interview had been conducted by one police officer and two representatives from the Federation Against Copyright Theft (Fact), and reportedly said the police officer “sat back and let Fact do all the questioning, so Fact were running the show”.

Unsurprisingly, Phil Clapp, from the Cinema Exhibitors’ Association, welcomed the sentence, saying it gave “an important message on the increasing seriousness with which our courts rightly view film theft”.

Well, fair enough up to a point. But people receive shorter sentences for violence, burglary and the like, so such a long spell in prison seems out of proportion to me. But you never know there might even be a film to be made about this case.

 

• THIS year’s Big City Read in York is The Orpheus Descent by Tom Harper, which I have just read and enjoyed very much. York Explore is giving away 5,000 copies of Tom’s imaginative thriller and it is well worth grabbing one if any remain.

York author Tom writes simply but well and elegantly, encompassing myth and history in a frantic time-slip story based around a man’s desperate search for his missing wife – and the dreamlike denouement really is a splendid achievement. All that and Plato too.

As part of Big City Read, I shall be giving a talk at Bishopthorpe Library next Thursday from 6.30pm to 8pm. I thought of using the title My Brilliant Career As a Novelist, but decided that would be a very short talk.

I have had two novels, The Amateur Historian and Felicity’s Gate, published, firstly here in York and then by the US publishers, Minotaur Books. A third, The Baedeker Murders, I put on Amazon for Kindle, sadly to little apparent effect.

But I love writing and have two novels on the go at present, both of which are ping-ponging between writer and agent. The published Rounder Brothers books are crime-themed and set in York, while of the unpublished novels, one is set in York past and present and the other partly takes place in York and Yorkshire.

Once writing has its teeth in you, it doesn’t let go, or so I’ve found.