Cinema Guzzo, a Montreal-based theatre chain, has been ordered to pay $10,000 in damages arising from the search of a patron's bag that violated their privacy rights. The lawsuit over the "abusive search" was first filed in July 2007. While this case has nothing to do with copyright, how long will it be before the case is cited by U.S. copyright lobby groups as further evidence that Canada is hostile to their interests.
Cinema Guzzo Faces $10K Damage Award for Invasive Search
June 1, 2009
Share this post
2 Comments

Law Bytes
Episode 266: Justin Safayeni on the Ontario Government's Overnight Evisceration of Access to Information
byMichael Geist

April 27, 2026
Michael Geist
Ep. 265 – Jason Millar on Claude Mythos, Project Glasswing, and the Governance Crisis in Frontier AI
April 20, 2026
Michael Geist
March 30, 2026
Michael Geist
Search Results placeholder
Michael Geist on Substack
Recent Posts
The Illusion of Protection: Why Canada’s Growing Push to Ban Social Media for Kids Won’t Work
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 266: Justin Safayeni on the Ontario Government’s Overnight Evisceration of Access to Information
AI Without Canada: Why the Heritage Committee’s AI Report Could Lead to Less Canadian Content in the Training Data
Addressing the AI Policy Challenge: My Appearance before the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications
Lawful Access Heads to Committee: The Opposition Found Its Voice, the Government Never Found Its Defence

Too bad it wasn’t $100,000.
Too bad is was in Quebec and therefore won’t likely to be a precedent in the ROC.
Too bad that people are dumb enough to subject themselves to such degrading searches – after all, this is not international airline travel. Nobody is forced to attend first run Hollywood movies.
Too bad that the Competition Bureau is DOA.
Too bad that there is not a boycott of cinemas such as this one.
Be fair. That patron might have been smuggling a bag of candy that someone gifted or some less concerned vendor provided at a fraction of Cinema Guzzo’s price. If you complain about that, next you will complain that Microsoft or some other company cannot search my computer and change setting like my browser’s homepage or file associations. How can Adobe cope if people keep removing Acrobat’s file rights and changing to the tiny perfect pdf reader from Foxit.
http://northerninsights.blogspot.com/