Hurt Locker Lawsuits May Reach Canadians, Too 159
First time accepted submitter so.dan writes "Canadian copyright guru Michael Geist reports that the 'File sharing lawsuits involving the movie the Hurt Locker [that] have been big news in the United States for months... are coming to Canada as the Federal Court of Canada has paved the way for the identification of subscribers at Bell Canada, Cogeco, and Videotron who are alleged to have copied the movie.' This is the first I've ever heard of MAFIAA lawsuits beginning to succeed in Canada. The move seems to target larger ISPs. Are subscribers of smaller ISPs — who must lease their lines from the larger ones such as Bell — relatively protected from such invasions of privacy due to some sort of technical difficulty in determining the names of subscribers? (Please excuse my technical ignorance)."
What's the point? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What's the point? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:How about a boycott? (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh goodie! A call for a boycott - because those work so well when there's still millions who won't join in on said boycott :D /sarcasm
Let's give it a shot, though...
Starting with the production companies...
Voltage Pictures - not much to boycott there.
Grosvenor Park - no watching "Love in the Time of Cholera", "Disaster Movie" (no loss there) or "Righteous Kill"
Film Capital Europe Funds - again, not much to boycott.
First Light Production - no "K-19 The Widowmaker"
Kingsgate - zilch
Ohhhh... this one should get some teenage girls going "omg I have to boycott them!? noooooooeees":
Summit Entertainment - That's right, no more watching the "Twilight" saga, the "Step Up" series, "Push", "Knowing" (ot: great opening sequence), "The Brothers Grimm", "Mr. & Mrs. Smith", "Memento", "Vanilla Sky",
I guess we'll leave the distribution companies be, but just for kicks, they include Warner Brothers Pictures, Lionsgate Home Entertainment, Summit Home Entertainment, Universal Studios Home Entertainment. Including them, and the other distributions, means you can now put more than half of the movies made, EVER, on your boycott list. That shouldn't be too hard, eh.
Oh, another good one..
Effects: Company 3 - They have worked on, among other, "Tower Heist", "Conan the Barbarian" but also the "Transformers" series, the "Pirates of the Caribbean" series, "X-Men: The Last Stand", "Sucker Punch", "Rango"... shit, they go all the way back to "Being John Malkovich". That's 202 more movies - many of which quite popular - that you can add to your boycott list.
And we haven't even gotten to the fact that you want the crew to be included. You do realize that eventually, it's entirely likely that you will have put, say, 95% of all movies out of Hollywood - and whatever bunch more that the distributors and investment companies etc. touch outside of Hollywood - on your boycott list, right?
Yes, the real power is in the consumer. The question however is not whether the consumer has the power to bring down corporations; that power is a given. The question is whether that consumer has the power to stop themselves from enjoying entertainment just because somebody on Slashdot is entirely deluded on the feasibility of boycotts in general, and especially those scoped as large as you just have.
If you just want to boycott the studio that's actually doing the suing, rather than some make-up artist who would give you puzzling looks as to what the hell you're on, then boycott Voltage Pictures.
But, again, there's just not much to boycott there, even though I guess their list is growing:
http://www.imdb.com/company/co0179337/ [imdb.com]
Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's the point? (Score:4, Insightful)
The main reason for illegal copying, actually.
Take a look at how often TV shows get copied. TV shows, the very same you get to see on TV for free anyway. Now, why would people do that?
First, because they're not available at all where they live. It took 3 years to get Big Bang Theory where I live, and for the longest time it didn't look like we'd get it at all. Same for IT Crowd. And I'm still waiting for Mongrels (and it's not bloody likely I'll ever get to see it on TV).
Then there's the delay for non-US people getting shows. We're at the very least one season behind. More often, more than one. Sheen's freak out, causing an interruption in Two and a half man still hasn't hit us. And it won't for some time, the writer's strike just recently caused us to watch reruns. Not to mention that they often mess up the order and that we almost certainly don't get to see "season themed" shows (for Halloween or X-Mas) when they're appropriate.
And finally, the often atrocious dubbing. I won't go into detail, but a lot of jokes and often even the meaning get changed and mangled in translation. Simpsons are notorious for it, but for almost all shows, once you've seen the original, you realize just how crappy the dubbing is. And there's no chance in hell that you could simply forgo it.
Now, of course one could argue to get the show DVDs. And if they're available, I'll certainly take that option gladly. But they often fail for the same three reasons: Shows that weren't on TV yet are often "not available in that country", it takes ages for it to become available on DVD (we're literally talking years here) and it's often a matter of luck whether you can actually get a non-dubbed version.
Fix that and "piracy" will drop instantly.