MPAA’s Glickman targets Canada
p2pnet.net news:- Canada is once again being blasted for allegedly aiding and abetting movie pirates. But this time it’s not Ellis Jacob, and the delivery vehicle isn’t the Globe & Mail.
Instead, Hollywood fact adjustment specialist Dan Glickman was talking to the US House Ways and Means subcommittee hearing on trade with China, claiming his employers, Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney, are being deprived of huge guestimated future profits by pirates.
“Someone can illegally camcord a movie in Montreal, send the file by way of the Internet to someone in Guangzhou, who then dubs and subtitles the dialogue, and then illegally presses thousands of DVDs,” he assured the committee, contactmusic.com has Glickman, who runs Hollywood’s MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), saying.
“A pirated disc made in China can, in a day or two, be on the streets of Los Angeles,” he said.
On top of that, “From restricting the total number of foreign films allowed in each year to a mere 20 to controlling distribution of those films and often censoring them, the Chinese government is preventing ‘legitimate companies from supplying Chinese audiences the filmed entertainment they clearly desire’,” Variety has him saying, going on:
The “MPAA estimates the industry lost $244 million in potential revenue in China during 2005.”
It reminds one of Enron. Wasn’t there something about the company making unequivocal statements about, and cashing in on, earnings that hadn’t actually been achieved?
With that in mind, how did Hollywood arrive at that very precise number? Glickman doesn’t explain but presumably, the MPAA works along similar lines to its brother organization, the RIAA which acts for Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG, the members of the Big 4 Organized Music cartel.
The Big 4 are currently trying to sue their own customers, men and women, and even young children, they call file sharing criminals, into buying ‘product’.
Files shared, they say, equal sales lost. The assertion is, of course, ridiculous, but it’s being swallowed hook, line and sinker.
Are the studios saying every time someone in China buys a ‘pirate’ DVD at, let’s say, the equivalent of $5, they’re consequently not buying a Hollywood DVD which, not at all incidentally, would probably cost the equivalent of around $20?
Meanwhile, “The MPAA chief said that on one recent visit to Beijing, he even found bootleg copies of a movie made by his producer son, Jonathan Glickman,” says the story.
And, “While fake DVDs litter Beijing, fake Olympic-logo materials are impossible to find,” Variety has him saying in a typical Glickman non sequitur.
Also See:
aiding and abetting – Canada arouses corporate ire, February 15, 2005
contactmusic.com – MPAA chief says China reneges on piracy agreement, February 16, 2005
Variety – Glickman sends warning to Congress, February 15, 2005
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
February 16th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
The “MPAA estimates the industry lost $244 million in potential revenue in China during 2005.”
I sympathize. I personally lost a potential $1,00,000 in real potenetial revenue becase I had no luck at the horsetrack. Congress should investigate horsetracks along with the chinese.
February 21st, 2007 at 8:08 am
Canada is the world’s largest piracy offender per capita, says this Dayly Tech story
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=6123
Gee, I thought the american record companies had this distinction:
http://rafa_venegas.web.prdigital.com/piracy.htm