p2pnet - rss feed: Hollywood ‘Pirate Canada’ claims
p2pnet.net news:- It seems Bev ‘Limousines’ Oda, a federal Canadian minister answerable, in theory, to the Canadian people, wants to cave into Hollywood, a generic term for six hard-core entertainment companies answerable only to their shareholders.
Yesterday p2pnet ran a spoof post suggesting Canada was about to make unauthorised possession of of a camcorder an offence punishable by a jail term.
Today, “Canada’s reputation as the high seas of movie piracy has the federal government considering a move to make camcorders in theatres a crime,” says the Winnipeg Sun, going on.
“Our government is aware of the problem of piracy and the role of camcording in contributing to that problem,” Heritage Minister Bev Oda said yesterday. “I am currently working with my colleague the minister of justice on measures to address this issue.”
An interdepartmental working group is already considering an amendment to the Criminal Code as one way to stop the practice, a Canadian Heritage official says.
Unlike the U.S., Canada has nothing in its Criminal Code to combat camcording of movies in theatres.
That has to be CHANGED and NOW!, say Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney, with the George W. Bush government firmly supporting them.
What’s set the corporate cat amongst the political pigeons? Warner Bros is spearheading a campaign to have Canada’s laws changed to better suit the mostly US-owned movie industry. It says 70% of all its films released over the past 18 months have been taped in Canada.
When Hollywood launched its war against Canada, the figure was 50%. But, “Over the weeks that followed, industry sources began altering that number, with suggestions that the figure was actually 20 percent, 23 percent, 30 percent, or 40 percent,” said Canadian Net law experet Dr Michael Geist recently, going on.
Such a broad range of possibilities suggests that the industry simply does not know. In fact, new reports this morning out of New York indicate that New York City alone is responsible for more than 40 percent of camcorder piracy.
Moreover, a closer examination of actual industry data indicates that all of these figures are wildly inflated, with the actual number closer to 3 percent of MPAA released movies.
When combined with the fact that few, if any, Canadian movies are said to be affected and Canadian copyright law already addresses the issue - it is an infringement to camcord a movie and camcording a movie for the purposes of distribution brings with it the prospect of huge fines and jail time - the issue highlights the need to avoid knee-jerk legislative proposals by instead focusing on obtaining independent, reliable data.
According to the Big Six studios’ MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), the movie biz is being ruined by counterfeiters largely supplied by crooks with camcorders. But it’s an old and hoary claim.
As p2pnet pointed out yesterday:
Notwithstanding claims that its owners are being ruined by movie pirates, in its eye-popping annual theatrical market statistics report, the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) said global film audiences, “boosted the worldwide box office to an all-time high of $25.8 billion, compared to 23.3 billion in 2005,” an 11% increase.
And the US box office, “rebounded in 2006 to finish the year at $9.49 billion in revenues compared to $8.99 billion in 2005 - a 5.5% increase from the previous year, with 1.45 billion movie tickets sold in the U.S., ending a three-year downward trend in ticket sales,” it says.
And as we also pointed out, many, if not most, of the releases which show up online get there thanks to Hollywood insiders.
As an authoritative AT&T Labs report says, of a total of 285 movies its researchers sampled on the p2p networks, 77% were leaked by industry ‘insiders’.
And, “If they eventually stop releasing movies in Canada it’ll just ensure that 100% of all American movies will be bootleg,” says a p2pnet post to our story on the Warner Bros camcorder farce. It continues:
Once people get a taste of DRM free first run movies on their home theater they won’t want to go back to the olden days. I also think these people will demand better quality now that HDTV is beginning to gain steam. Street vendors will step up to the plate and fix that too.
Money that would have been wasted in theaters will be spent in back alleys buying pirated movies.
Canada has been “working with” MPAA clone the CMPDA (Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association) in “lobbying the federal government to make the act of camcording a punishable offence,” the Winnipeg Sun has Dianne Schwalm (upper right), senior vp of theatrical marketing for Warner Bros in Canada, declaring.
According to the story, “Alberta and Quebec appear to be hotbeds of camcording crime” but, “But nobody can be charged,” says Schwalm “It’s the perfect-crime scenario.”
Says another p2pnet Reader’s Write:
Hell, Arena’s ban cameras/video recorders etc. I assume theaters can as well, and throw you out for having one…. and it’s already illegal to record a movie and make money off of it.
INAL: But my best guess is the ‘copyright’ cartel are doing everything they can to get one law on the books in Canada, where they do not have to actually prove the ‘criminal’ made any money. So once ‘for profit’ is no longer a requirement and the fines are high enough, they have a foot in the door to add t to other laws.
I’m also sure they will continue their attempt to whittle away the whole burden of proof ‘thing’ that has kept them from suing in Canada…so far anyway.
They will not be happy until they no longer have to prove anything. They make accusations and the accused has no option but to pay them, that’s how they want it and to me that’s extortion, pure and simple.
No need to stay tuned. The mainstream Canadian media will do that for you, repeating movie industry claims verbatim without any attempt to balance them.
Jon Newton - p2pnet
Also See:
p2pnet - Will Canada ban camcorders?, May 8, 2007
altering that number - Hollywood’s war on Canada, May 4, 2007
Warner Bros camcorder farce - Hollywood bans Canada, May 8, 2007
Winnipeg Sun - Canada walks the plank, May 9, 2007
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at thIs the endSurvey: How Did Copyright Infringement Become Equated with Robbery? (of the Net) nigh?zze University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
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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!
May 9th, 2007 at 10:58 am
I find it really funny. A country with the a population on par with California produces some sat 40% others 70% of pirated movies. Give me a break! Just another attemp by the MPAA to dictate to the people of Canada what they can do. I have been going to movies for years and I have never seen someone with a camcorder. The problem with stories like this is that people see it as the big bad companys (MPAA) trying to squeeze as much money from people as they can. They do not give a shit about the people they say they are fighting for. It is all about the money. That is is all they care about.
May 10th, 2007 at 7:24 am
“I am currently working with my colleague the minister of justice on measures to address this issue.”
And what is the ISSUE? That camcorders can be used to copy movies?
Why not stop the joking and say that the ISSUE is that americans want to run Canada, just like all other countries, particularly like Iraq.
An interesting article on the ISSUE appears in Wired:
United States’ “Free Trade” Laws Carry Our Copyright Virus
http://blog.wired.com/music/2007/05/united_states_f.html