Imagine looking at a movie on your computer that features local men showering at a gym somewhere in San Diego. One of the men looks very familiar to you because, after all, it is you.

A local business is advertising on its Web site that it has actual footage, taken by a hidden camera, of men changing clothes and taking showers.

The site proclaims that its videos feature real people, not models or actors, and that the films are legitimate. In the trailers, faces of some of the people are covered up, giving the impression that there is some concern for legal liability.

Video cams are ubiquitous and easily concealed. For example, last week, officials at Hoover High School expelled several students because they used a cell phone to record underneath a teacher’s skirt and then shared the video among students.

In response to events like these, a few years ago, the California Legislature enacted a law making it a crime to record/photograph someone in the nude in an area where a reasonable person would expect privacy. For example, a locker room is such an area, while Black’s Beach, known as a “nude beach,” is not. (Penal Code sec. 647(k).

Consequently, photographing someone in a locker room is, arguably, a crime. To the extent that the person making the film did so for sexual gratification, or because he or she is sexually compulsive, a court could order the person to register as a sex offender.

In the Hoover High case, school officials initially treated the students’ actions like a prank, merely suspending them. (Teachers at the school, however, saw it as a far more serious event and demanded that the district expel the students.) Movies that cater to sexual fetishes, however, are more than mere pranks. Federal law requires the makers of pornography to maintain records of the actors used in such films. This is to ensure that the actors are at least 18 years old.

So it’s hard to imagine that a company making movies via hidden cams can claim that it used them without the actors’ knowledge but complied with federal statutory and regulatory law by obtaining their consent. Unless the company is simply trying to hype the entertainment value of the fantasies it sells by claiming it acquired them illegally even while it is in fact complying with federal law, it is either engaging in false advertising or it is violating federal law.