p2pnet - rss feed: Hollywood lauds Harper
p2pnet.net news:- Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper will be absolutely delighted. Hollywood has, “given the Canadian government a standing ovation,” says Variety.
For what? For introducing a bill that’ll turn anyone caught camcording a made-in-Hollywood movie in a Canadian cinema into a criminal.
According to Hollywood’s MPAA, quoted in the story, camcorders, “in general do the most damage” and are “at the top of the piracy pyramid, supplying more than 90% of newly released movies that end up on the Internet and on the streets,” it says unequivocally, not troubling to mention how, or from where, the statistic was developed.
“The piracy issue heated up in January after The Globe and Mail reported that Fox’s Hollywood-based president of domestic distribution had sent a blistering letter to Ellis Jacob, the Toronto-based chief executive of Cineplex Entertainment, Canada’s biggest cinema chain,” says the newspaper proudly. “Spitting mad after pinpointing Canadian theatres as the source of illegal camcording, Fox threatened to stop sending copies of all its films to Cineplex’s 130 movie houses, or push back Canadian release dates.”
The G&M never bothers to point out that Hollywood insiders themselves are frequently found to be behind the posts which show up online.
In the most recent example, Lions Gate’s Hostel: Part II, due for release on June 8, have long been online and available on street-sale DVDs.
It was a working copy “in rough, unfinished form” which could only have come from someone within the movie industry itself.
And despite non-stop Hollywood claims that unauthorised online appearances chronically drain Hollywood revenues, movies continue to thrive in their natural habitats, the cinemas of the world, as evidenced by the raging success of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.
Stay tuned.
Also See:
Variety - RIAA Accused of Extortion and Conspiracy in Tampa, Florida, case, UMG v. Del Cid, June 4, 2007
a criminal - Conned by Hollywood: Canada’s disgrace, June 2, 2007
proudly - Ottawa to muscle in on video piracy, May 30, 2007
rough, unfinished form - Hostel: Part II already online, June 1, 2007
raging success - ‘Pirates’ rakes it in, Hune 4, 2007
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the 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.
rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile - http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php | | And use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site
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!
June 5th, 2007 at 4:53 pm
As a poster way-back-when noted, if Hollywood wants to threaten Canadians, maybe Canada should restrict Hollywood’s ability to use Canadian landscape and locales for filming. Tit for tat, I suppose.
And yes, where did that statistic come from? Please not a “proprietary” thing again.