Canada caves in to Hollywood
p2pnet.net news:- Stephen Harper’s Conservatives have all but agreed to Hollywood’s contention that Canada is responsible for the vast majority of illegal camcorded copies of movies which show up on the p2p networks and street corners around the world.
Following pressure from Hollywood, with the Bush administration in lock-step behind it, the federal government plans to introduce legislation which will make it a crime to use handheld cameras to copy movies in cinemas, says the Ottawa Citizen.
“Pressure from the film industry has been mounting for months, culminating this week with Warner Bros. film studio announcing it will cancel its sneak preview screenings in Canada, starting with this summer’s releases of Ocean’s Thirteen and the next Harry Potter film,” says the story.
The government was until recently “cool” to a Criminal Code crackdown, but it, “now hopes to move a bill quickly through the parliamentary process,” according to a government insider.
Another anonymous spokesperson, this time from Warner Bros, said in the past 18 months, “70 per cent of the studio’s bootlegged movies originated in Canada,” states the item.
He didn’t say how the number was compiled. However, as Canadian Net expert Michael Geist said recently, when Hollywood launched its war against Canada, the camcording piracy 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”.
What are the MPAA members smoking?
Your “friendly neighborhood Canadian supposedly accounts for 7 out of every 10 pirated movies,” said Cinema Blend’s Stuart Wood, going on, “Well in a new report by the MPAA, they also claim that New York is responsible for 40% of world piracy. Four out of every ten pirated movies.”
How, Wood wonders, can you have 110% of anything?
And, “When you consider other US cities and places like China, Malaysia, UK, the rest of Europe etc etc etc aren’t even included in these statistics, you start to wonder just what the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) members smoke while watching movies?” – he says. “Is the western world in total responsible for 231 out of every 10 pirated DVDs???”
“One would hope that government policy would be dictated by facts rather than by lobbying,” the Ottawa Citizen quotes Geist as saying. “We’ve got all these numbers out there about Canada being this piracy haven and we’ve never had any sort of independent, verifiable data to support that.”
According to the MPAA, the US, “is still the top source of pirated movies,” says the story, and, “The notion that somehow stepping up the penalties against camcording will solve this issue is completely undermined by the experience in the United States, where there are laws, but the U.S. is the largest source of camcorded movies in the world and it is also experiencing a proliferation,” states Geist.
77% of these samples appear to have been leaked by industry insiders
Judging by the tremendous fuss suddenly kicked up by Warner, et al, the flood of flicks must be a recent development, one would think.
But that’s not the case at all. And nor are camcording pirates the principal villains. Of a total of 285 movies researchers sampled on the p2p networks, 77% were leaked by industry ‘insiders,’ says a 2003 AT&T Labs report.
It states:
We developed a data set of 312 popularmovies and located one or more samples of 183 of these movies on file sharing networks, for a total of 285 movie samples. 77% of these samples appear to have been leaked by industry insiders. Most of our samples appeared on file sharing networks prior to their official consumer DVD release date. Indeed, of the movies that had been released on DVD as of the time of our study, only 5% first appeared after their DVD release date on a web site that indexes file sharing networks, indicating that consumer DVD copying currently represents a relatively minor factor compared with insider leaks.
“There are so many articles about this issue pointing to made-up numbers about the amount of camcording that happens, how much of it is Canadian, and how much comes out of Montreal,” says Digital Copyright Canada’s Russell McOrmond, continuing:
To be honest, I like the idea of having a specialized bill to deal with this issue so that it can be separated from the larger set of copyright revision issues.
While I don’t like my taxpayer money going to redirecting law enforcement from more important criminal activity, I think that having camcordering be clearly unlawful is appropriate. The misdirection of tax money is a minor problem in my mind compared to the infringement of users and IT property rights proposed in other copyright revision.
Charlie Angus is quoted in Variety and The Edmonton Sun as suggesting that the only way to really solve this problem is to monetize the system, rather than trying to rely on enforcement. The article suggests that many people want the Copyright act modernized, but doesn’t at all document the fact that different people want it changed in different directions (IE: Recording industry wanting to turn back the clock, etc).
Meanwhile, Warner Bros will, “rethink its cancellation of early promotional screening and ’sneak peaks’ if the federal government comes up with a new law,” says the Ottawa Citizen.
Jon Newton – p2pnet
Also See:
illegal camcorded copies – Waltzing pirates in bulky clothing, May 10, 2007
Ottawa Citizen – Government plans new movie piracy law, May 11, 2007
altering that number – Hollywood ‘Pirate Canada’ claims, May 11, 2007
Cinema Blend – MPAA Lies About Movie Piracy!, May 10, 2007
AT&T Labs report – Analysis of Security Vulnerabilities in the Movie Production and Distribution Process, September 13, 2003
Digital Copyright Canada – Canada cracks down on camcorders? Best to have a special bill on this…, May 11, 2007
If your Net access is blocked by goverment 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 11th, 2007 at 9:51 am
If I were going to cam a movie, I would have the following:
1. A small, wireless video camera with audio.
2. A cellphone equipped with a small, inconspicuous earphone but without video capability.
3. A partner on the outside of the theatre with a video receiver and another cellphone.
4. A video receiver with monitor.
5. A video recording device.
I would conceal the wireless video camera in a hat or other article of clothing and sit so that the camera was aimed towards the screen. My partner would give me instructions that would allow me to adjust the camera’s aim. Once the movie started, my partner would start the recording to capture the received video.
Depending on the wording of the policy, I would not be technically breaking the policy since I would not have any video recording device in my possession if caught. I could say that I brought it in because I did not want anyone to steal it from my car. An entry in my checkbook stub will show that I recently purchased the equipment from a private person. If I’m busted, my partner only has to cash the check Since there is no video recording equipment (or recording itself) in my possession, there would be no real proof that I actually recorded a movie or intended to. Therefore, reasonable doubt may enter the equation. The cashed check and the entry in my checkbook would give me plausible deniability. If the wording of the law states that only mere possession of any kind of camera is grounds for conviction, then that would mean that just about everyone with a cellphone would be committing a crime. This would be a great issue to point out in any court.
May 13th, 2007 at 9:58 am
Or you could just bribe the projectionist or manager.
May 13th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
Depending on the price of the bribe, that may be too expensive. How much money would you want to get in order to risk 9 years in prison? If nailed, would you talk? Keep in mind that movies also have embedded watermarks which uniquely identify a film. If a cam is “too good” it USUALLY means that the cammer has had inside help. The only way I would trust a bribed manager or projectionist is if I were the projectionists or manager, or if I was friends with that person long before he or she worked in the theatre.