You can chalk this one up under "we hate our customers":

Sejas was enjoying the movie so much that she decided to film a short clip of the sci-fi adventure's climax to get her little brother hyped to go see it. Buy This Photo Jhannet Sejas taped a few seconds of "Transformers."

Minutes later, two Arlington County police officers were pointing their flashlights at the young couple in the darkened theater and ordering them out. They confiscated the digital camera as evidence and charged Sejas, a Marymount University sophomore and Annandale resident, with a crime: illegally recording a motion picture.

Yes, it's a bad idea to pull out a camcorder in a theater - but anyone pondering this case for a nanosecond would understand that her actions would actually have led to another sale - so they deserved a little "don't do that" chat, not a criminal referral. Actual thought seems to be banned though:

Kendrick Macdowell, general counsel for the Washington-based National Association of Theatre Owners, said that illegal pirating of films costs the industry billions of dollars and that the industry was stepping up efforts to stamp it out.

Because of that, he said, there has to be a "zero-tolerance policy at the theater level."

"We cannot educate theater managers to be judges and juries in what is acceptable," he said. "Theater managers cannot distinguish between good and bad stealing."

Hey, what a coincidence: I can't distinguish between Macdowell and a stinky pile of refuse, either. Wait - maybe I can. The pile of refuse doesn't hate me

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