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Canada Responsible for 50% of Movie Piracy
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Jan 26, 2007 02:23 PM
from the should-we-blame-the-government-or-blame-society dept.
from the should-we-blame-the-government-or-blame-society dept.
westcoaster004 writes "Hollywood is blaming Canada as being the source for at least 50% of of the world's pirated movies. According to an investigation by Twentieth Century Fox, most of the recording is taking place in Montreal theatres where films are released in both English and French. This has led to consideration of delaying movie releases in Canada. Their problem is that the Canadian Copyright Act, as well as the policies of local police forces, makes it difficult to come down especially hard on perpetrators. Convicting someone is apparently rather difficult, almost requiring a law officer to have a 'smoking camcorder' in the hands of the accused. Hence, the consideration of more drastic measures."
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Canadian Movie Piracy Claims Mostly Fiction? 151 comments
Justin Primus writes "Michael Geist's weekly column dismantles recent claims that Canada is the world's leading movie piracy haven. The article uses the industry's own data to demonstrate that the assertions about movie bootlegging and its economic impact are greatly exaggerated and that the MPAA's arguments about Canadian copyright law are misleading. I particularly liked how Geist dug up the fact that the MPAA itself says that there have only been 179 movies recorded with a camcorder over the past three years out of the 1,400 that the Hollywood studios released."
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US Group Wants Canada Blacklisted Over Piracy 585 comments
An anonymous reader writes "Following up on an earlier story, the IIAA wants to add Canada to a blacklist of the worst intellectual property offenders. A powerful coalition of U.S. software, movie and music producers is urging the Bush administration to put Canada on an infamous blacklist of intellectual property villains, alongside China, Russia and Belize. 'Canada's chronic failure to modernize its copyright regime has made it a global hub for bootleg movies, pirated software and tiny microchips that allow video-game users to bypass copyright protections', the International Intellectual Property Alliance complains in a submission to the U.S. government."
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Due South (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Due South (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Due South (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, I don't understand the thinking behind these taxes either...
The end result? No less than:
1. People think it's more OK to copy copyrighted material, as they pay for it anyway.
2. People purchase media in bulk from neighboring countries without these taxes, where shipping charges are not a problem.
Result of #1 is increased piracy and #2 is economic losses for Swedish hardware retailers.
Re:Taxes (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Due South (Score:4, Insightful)
It does, however, tell me a lot about the company you find yourself in the midst of.
Re:Due South (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Due South (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Due South (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Due South (Score:5, Informative)
PROPAGANDA (Score:4, Insightful)
It has come out how the RIAA and MPAA lined the pockets of MPs and administrators, practically buying unpopular legislation. Now this "news" comes out - to distract the public from the corporate pay-for-votes aspect of the story.
'Sides, it's too cold to go to the movies, ya' hose-head!
Re:Due South (Score:4, Informative)
The guy I most frequntly see selling movies in the subway boasts "no shakey cameras in the back of the theater, all my movies are direct scans. $5.00, you whole family can see it for less than a large popcorn."
And 97% of that... (Score:3, Funny)
South Park (Score:5, Funny)
Re:South Park (Score:5, Funny)
Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Tip: Actors/Execs aren't worth the millions they're paid, and the everyday copyright infringement is proving that.
Tom
Re:Problem (Score:5, Interesting)
In fact, actors and execs in the film industry are only paid what the market will bear - and what previous box office success warrants. for example, to say that peter jackson isn't worth what he's being paid for the LOTR franchise and ensuing going forward is absurd - because that franchise is verging on 5 billion, if not billions more. I'd wager that Peter's take is in the area of 250 million. I'd wager he's worth more than his take and then some.
infringement proves the opposite, actually - that the brands and content in question is of value that people are willing to take the moderate risk in STEALING IT.
and your point about sticking to a 19th century business model is moot - everyone complains about the business model but no one offers a viable alternative that won't result in a significant contraction/reshuffling of the industry.
Re:Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not the opposite. These people don't really believe there's any risk that they will be busted. Therefore they are weighing only the monetary cost of illegally copied content (nothing) vs. the retail price (something) and deciding on copyright infringement. That doesn't mean they would pay for the content if they couldn't download it. There's lots of things I'll watch if they just "come on" (although I can't get broadcast TV where I live at all, so that is pretty much over until I move someplace that's not true) but I won't pay to see them.
Your point about a significant contraction/reshuffling of the industry is irrelevant. These people don't have a right to have a profitable business. Period.
Re:Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, this sucks big time for Hawaii: nowadays, cane sugar plantations are rare, and the industry that once held up the entire Hawaiian economy disappeared essentially overnight. Sucks to be them.
What did not happen in this scenario is, the Hawaiian sugar plantation owners didn't lobby congress to pass laws making the cultivation of sugar cane illegal in California. But if you extend this analogy to the RIAA, that's exactly what they'd like to do.
Here's the situation: DRM is unworkable, for technical reasons, for the same reason that software copy-protection has been unworkable and will continue to be so. The people have already woken up to the convenience of digital media, however, and are not going to roll back the clocks and carry around a bulky discman when an iPod or similar can hold so much more music and play for so much longer. This is simple common sense. Further, we're purchasing everything else on the internet these days, and the average consumer wants to purchase music this way too.
But because DRM is unworkable, the record companies feel that distributing music on-line is inviting copyright infringement. So they resist the migration. The result? A great demand for on-line music, already encoded in MP3 format for ease of use on the iPod and similar, and a very limited RIAA-sanctioned supply.
Well, the way the free market normally works is, I see that consumers want the media, and so I start my own business to take advantage of the high demand and low supply, and make money hand over fist. That's how business works. There's nothing stopping me from starting a CD business, for example: I can purchase a bunch of CDs in bulk and resell them. But because we're dealing with digital media, this avenue isn't open to me, at least not legally. I can't sell a bunch of Britney Spears on-line in MP3 format, because those tracks don't "belong" to me in the sense that I don't have copyright.
So the result is, illegal or questionably legal sites like allofmp3.com do it anyway, and make money hand over fist. People are willing to pay for music if the price is right; 99 cents for an AAC track with Fairplay that will only play on one particular kind of portable music player and will suddenly cease to be functional after your operating system is upgraded or re-installed 5 times, on the other hand, is unsurprisingly much less popular.
The sick thing is, the RIAA could absolutely afford to match allofmp3.com's services and prices and be just as profitable as they are -- more so, in fact, because the fact that they are legally sanctioned and don't require transactions in rubles would make the vast majority of consumers far more willing to buy, and they have the infrastructure required do the sales on a much larger, international scale.
But they won't, because they're married to their extremely high margins. It's amazing, really. They make a ton and a half of money, and the prospect they face is making less money, not no money, and so their response is luddite lobbying of legislatures around the world to somehow make their outdated business model sustainable. But this is a stopgap measure: there are songs and albums that people want to buy in CD form, and there are catchy singles and tunes that people would rather get as an MP3. Saying "no you can't" to the iPod generation isn't going to work.
All
Re:Problem (Score:4, Interesting)
I see at least 1 movie in theaters per week, often two.
I pay $11 to sit through 5 tv commercials followed by 6 trailer commercials as well as about 8 studio commercials. Then i sit through a commercial telling me that piracy is illegal and that i could go to jail. This delightful process then takes up 30 minutes of my life that i PAID FOR. This isn't entertainment, this is crap that I don't want and am pissed of by it.
To top it off ushers from the movie theater then walk up and down the isles during the movie with infra-red binoculars in order to seek out pirates with video cameras, which disturbs everyone in the theater.
But hey, it's the pirates fault that the movie industry is losing profits, right? It clearly has nothing to do with the absurd practices put forth by the MPAA.
Re:Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Delaying releases (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Delaying releases (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Delaying releases (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Bring on the year of the sequel! The Hil
Just so it's clear... (Score:5, Insightful)
2) So to "punish" the Canadians, they'll take away the legal avenue to purchase movies in Canada.
3) And this leads to....????? Profit???? Less Piracy?????
Presumably, the Canadian legislature will ask similar questions?
Re:Just so it's clear... (Score:5, Interesting)
See, part of the problem is our copyright law incorporates fair use explicitly. Since the *AAs couldn't get that part repealed, they managed to get themselves a levy on all blank media to counter the 'theft' which they are a victim of. Now, all recordable media that gets bought causes them to get paid a cut. Nice little scam from out perspective.
Many people in Canada have basically said "fsck it, if you're gonna charge me for all of my blank media, I'm gonna use some of it to make copies of your crap -- you're already getting paid, so I'm getting me a movie".
Mostly though, I'm absolutely shocked that many people are interested in seeing a camcorder recording of a movie. When I see a movie, I want a good picture quality -- not some friggin' hand-held recording of the movie.
Oh well, the vast majority of movies coming out nowadays are dreck anyway, and the ones I'm looking forward to, I'll go to/buy as soon as they're available to me.
Cheers
Re:Just so it's clear... (Score:5, Insightful)
- Montreal, a city of approximately 4 million, is responsible for 50% of the worlds 6.5 billion inhabitants piracy. 0.6% pirates 50%. Sure.
- Conflating the normal understanding of movie piracy as distributing movies with cams in theatres is a cheap Iraq/terrorist juxtaposition ploy
- The advantage is convenience, pirates cam both English and French for release in, of all places, Asia where the vast majority speak neither (ignoring that Quebec French is significantly different the French spoken elsewhere.)
- Finally, that somehow copyright legislation has much of any bearing on it.
How we got to a place where marketing shill non-entities of tertiary industries, such as the "chief executive of the Cineplex Entertainment theatre chain" or "president of Fox's domestic distribution", have the balls to threaten foreign countries is best left to historians but its well past time politicians put these dogs back in their place as purveyors of useless trivialities and told to STFU.
Telesync (Score:4, Insightful)
I have a feeling the issue of telesyncs is more one of ego... it probably bugs the crap out of Hollywood execs that it's done.
Maybe that's the issue with hollywood... everything is ego driven rather than via rational analysis. If that's true, it's costing them dearly.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Blame Canada.. (Score:5, Funny)
Brrrrr.... (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry, but I just arrived from a 15 minute walk between buildings and my brain is frozen. (Which, I believe, is also Canada's fault.) Could someone please make the appropriate Sony battery-related comment?
this is serious (Score:5, Funny)
Piracy is IP Terrorism.
Great. Now I Get To Deal With Them At the Theater (Score:5, Funny)
Great. Now I'm going to have to watch a movie from behind some Canadian snow-back who slips over the border; his camcorder blocking half my view, and my only connection to the movie the flashes of the screen I get as his flopping head jib-jabbers "aboot" the militaristic nature of American culture.
Blame Canada!
Blame Canada!
It seems that everything's gone wrong,
since Canada came along!
PS: Canada is my #1 favorite foreign country, I love to meet Canadians who come to the USA, and I always enjoy visiting Canada.
So (Score:4, Funny)
What 50% of world movies? (Score:5, Insightful)
Singapore is the piracy capital for Tamil/Telugu movies. Dubai is the palce to go to get Bollywood movies. Hongkong is the piracy portal for China and Korea. Canada is probably a distant fourth when it comes to movie piracy.
boo hoo. Hollywood needs Canada's cash. (Score:5, Insightful)
Treat people like they're criminals, and they will become criminals.
I'm Canadian. (Score:4, Informative)
But we still have the CRIA ads in our theatres saying not to pirate the movies we just paid to watch. It has a tendency to piss us off. I have a friend who downloads a movie (any movie) before going to a theater to see a movie on general principles. The general consensus in Canada is that the CRIA is pure evil, and are kept on a very thin leash. We try not to give them money if we can at all help it. But we like to go to theatres, and we like our boxed DVDs, so most of us have extensive collections and go to the theatre frequently anyway.
But that being said, I'm sure that the vast majority of us pirates would be more than willing to pay a fair price for movies, if the price was fair, and the profits went to the artists instead of a cartel of gangsters.
Re:I'm Canadian. (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed, and that's what the U.S. movie industry so scared about. Quote from the article: Camcording a movie in Canada is not illegal (it could be for personal use). The illegal part is distributing the recording to others, but that is a completely separate event. Again from the article: Fantastic! Let's just assume everyone is a criminal if we even suspect that they don't support the status-quo monopoly!
Personally I don't want Canadians giving up any of their freedoms just to maintain the current distribution monopolies. All Canadians in the audience should consider signing the petition against copyright extension: http://www.digital-copyright.ca/billc60/ [digital-copyright.ca].
This is a "Placed" PR piece (Score:5, Informative)
The Globe and Mail fell for this too, back on the 7th as Pirates of the Canadians [theglobeandmail.com]
In fact, the majority of the actual copies are inside jobs, taken from "screeners" sent to reviewers and from copies made by distributors and projectionists. It's amazingly hard for a Montreal cop to catch a "camcorder" who isn't actually in the theater (;-))
Many are copied from copies destined for Quebec, as they include both the english- and french-language versions, and can be identified by watermarks as being destined for or actually sent to, for example, Cineplex Entertainment. Which may explain why Fox was threatening that particular distributor...
--dave
Incorrect facts? (Score:5, Informative)
Funny, Children of Men's release date was december 25th, whereas:
11/16/2006 2006 Children Of Men
Hardly days after they were released, more like a month before hand. This always happens around this time of year as prerelease dvd's get sent out to reviewers, so how the hell are they trying to blame us Canadians for this? Who the hell download's cams anyways? Certainly not I.
Well, if they showed the movies in Canada (Score:3, Insightful)
Many films never even get shown in Canada, and since they're a very multi-ethnic society, they tend to want to watch movies from many countries that just plain aren't shown there.
It's one thing to want people to pay for a movie that shows in a nearby theater.
It's another thing to want people to pay for a movie that:
a. never showed within 100 miles of them; and
b. when it did show was in another bleeding province.
More lobbying lies... (Score:5, Funny)
Please, Canada? What about China, India or Eastern Europe where you can get movies before they released and where pirated disks openly sold on the street? Well, no, BLAME CANADA!
This is nothing more than FUD spread by *AA in effort to influence upcoming bill.
This smacks of political timing (Score:5, Informative)
I mean, this statement:
As much as 50 per cent of the world's pirated movies come from Canada, prompting the film industry to threaten to delay the release of new titles in this country.
Worldwide?! There is just no fucking way. We don't even hold a tiny candle to what goes on in Asia.
Also, as we know, the vast majority of movies leaked do not come from camcorder screeners, they are direct rips, leaked from the studios themselves by employees or connected people.
What they are really mad about is - 1. fair use is basically intrinsically stated within Canadian law, so its almost impossible to appeal, and 2. it is actually LEGAL to bring a camcorder into a theatre in Canada. The establishment can certainly bar you from doing so - its their theatre - but there is no actual law against doing this. Its basically a FUD piece.
Canada, huh. (Score:4, Insightful)
Thank you! (Score:4, Funny)
On behalf... (Score:4, Funny)
You're welcome.
-Cerv
PS: We promise to seed more.
Nothing but a lobbying tactic (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:FOX (Score:4, Interesting)
Not to mention the people that it would increase the demand for bootlegs floating around online.
How about this, after they make a film, in order to prevent piracy they burn the master copy before anyone can see it. And shoot all the people involved in the production, so that they can't make another copy. Gotta catch 'em all!
Mod parent up (Score:5, Insightful)
"Hollywood is blaming Canada as being the source for at least 50% of of the world's pirated movies..."
"Their problem is that the Canadian Copyright Act, as well as the policies of local police forces, makes it difficult to come down especially hard on perpetrators. Convicting someone is apparently rather difficult, almost requiring a law officer to have a 'smoking camcorder' in the hands of the accused. Hence, the consideration of more drastic measures."
So Canada is acting (unjustly according to Hollywood) in the notion that thier citizensa are innocent unless they are proven guilty beyond a shadow of doubt.
What a backwards country, thinking of of well being of its citizens over Corporate Revenues? Where are the lobbiests!?