Warner Brothers Pulls Canadian Previews

A number of readers let us know that Reuters and others are reporting that Warner Brothers is canceling movie previews in Canadian theaters, starting with Oceans Thirteen. A Warner VP said, "Within the first week of a film's release, you can almost be certain that somewhere out there a Canadian copy will show up." Recently, the International Intellectual Property Association placed Canada on its Priority Watch List, along with the likes of Argentina, China, Russia, Turkey, and Venezuela. This community knows, thanks to Michael Geist, that the claim is mostly ficiton.

Lucky Canadians

Too bad they don't do that here, too, so I wouldn't have to sit through so many previews just to see the movie I paid to see.

Re:Lucky Canadians

Those are called trailers, and they're not stopping those. They're canceling early screenings of new movies.

Re:Lucky Canadians

the term previews is used frequently for the trailers, commercials, etc. that are shown prior to the beginning of a film. i've been in theaters where they have their canned deal and it will say something about 'following the previews'. i don't know if this is common across all of the u.s. but it is how i have heard it used in each of the areas where i have lived in the u.s.
 
occasionally I've had passes to showings of films a week or two before they came out - and i always have had to explain to people that it was an 'early showing' or some such. if I just said preview, they wouldn't know what I meant, so I think the usage is pretty common.

Re:Lucky Canadians

I think the movie you were watching was I, Robot, and that those were the *closing* credits.

Re:Lucky Canadians

It's all crap. Everybody knows Canadians don't even have movie theaters. The project lamp heat melts the igloo. Besides, a group of Canadians together are easy prey for Polar Bears.

Re:Lucky Canadians

As a Canadian, I can confirm this. I once tried to set up a little home brew theater in my igloo, but the projector melted in the roof. A fire started briefly, but fortunately the melting ice quickly snuffed it out. It goes without saying that the projector was toasted in the incident. Whats worse though is that my igloo insurance policy did not cover the damages.

Re:A few years late, but....

The Americans claimed a victory because they stopped the native Americans from harassing them...

The American objective during the war was to kick the British out of North America.

Not only were the British still here afterwards, you lot had to rebuild the White House after we'd burned it down.

You didn't meet your objectives ...... you lost.

Re:A few years late, but....

Yeah? But now we got movies and you don't! So there! Nyah, nyah!

In 1812, we burned the White House for revenge.

This time around, we gave you Celine Dion.

DON'T MESS WITH CANADA! pffffffffffffffffh! :-)

Maybe I missed something...

... but where the hell is the correlation between a preview and a pirated full copy of a movie?

Re:You're probably thinking of a trailer

There seems to be a lot of confusion here. I take it they don't do this in the US.

In Britain (and I assume also in Canada), there's often a showing before the release date. Usually a day early, sometimes a week early. This is usualyl billed as a "special preview" or something to hype it up and to make people feel they're getting something special. Actually it usually just means the effective release date is the day before the posters claim.

So perhaps the headline should read "Movie piracy delays Canadian Release by up to a week".

Shooting themselves in the foot

Promotional Previews are specifically released in order to help promote the film through positive word of mouth and newspaper reviews..

Do they really think this is somehow going to help them make more revenue if there's no buzz on the street, amongst friends and no reviews in papers?

Talk about stupid. The movie industry seems as stupid as the RIAA labels..

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

they're trying to reduce sales. then they can claim that teh ebil PIRAT3S! are stealing everything and convince the government that they need to "modernize" canadian copyright and IP laws.

it's not stupid. it's moderately smart and it seems to be working quite well in the US.

WTF are they thinking?!

So in an effort to curb CAMCORDER pirated videos, they are getting rid of previews which will generate word of mouth, reviews, and more sales?!? It's not like we're talking about copied DVDs, or direct rips with full Dolby 7.1 surround sound, we're talking about PoC hand held camera recordings with a single audio channel, wiggling around through out the movie, with people blocking a chunk of the screen and audience noise over the movie...

I hate to break it to them, but anyone who is watching a copy of a movie from that medium was not in a position to actually buy a ticket or DVD.

-Rick

Re:WTF are they thinking?!

No, this isn't about any sort of legitimate concern; this is a political move.

Warner - and the MPAA by extension - want control of Canada the way they have control of America. This is a political tool to get publicity, and get a few ignorant members or a Tory Parliament to bite and draft up a version of the DMCA for Canada.

The message is clear: assimilate or else.

Re:WTF are they thinking?!

Exactly.

This has nothing to do with what they say it does, and everything to do with making everyone think that Canada is some major rogue when it comes to IP law. This move is, itself, an advertisement for their political position.

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

Indeed. This is the dumbest fucking idea I've heard since I joined the MPAA.

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

It is true, what you say.

I go to a lot of previews (part of the perks of being a University of Toronto student if you know where to look). Whenever a preview is shown to a select group of U of T students, there's a noticeable buzz going around campus (40,000+ strong) about the new movie. For example, I went to the previews for The Last King of Scotland and Waitress. After watching the previews, spreading a few words here and there myself, there's a noticeable amount of interest for those two movies.

Anyway, I don't know why Warner Bros would do this. Fox previews require us to hand in cell phones and they pat us down to check for recording devices. I don't mind letting them have a little touch if they're showing me a good movie for free. It's a win-win.

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

I disagree with you. I think that this is an excellent move by the film industry and should be encouraged. In fact, they should take it to the logical conclusion and stop making commercial movies altogether. That would prevent piracy. Movies suck. Do not cripple the 100 billion/yr computer industry that creates jobs for families to save the 5 billion/yr movie industry that creates trash and destroys families.

Self-fulfilling prophecy

> the studio said it will immediately halt all "promotional and word-of-mouth screenings"

Prediction: by August, there'll be a press release noting that revenues for Ocean's Thirteen and Harry Potter were low, and that it'sss all the faults of those tricksy pirateses stealing their preciousss, and that (surprise, surprise), the only solution is that the Canadian government "harmonize" its rules with the US by passing something equivalent to (or worse than) the DMCA.

Awesome!

Now what can we do as a nation to get them to pull their crappy movies from our theaters?

Re:Awesome!

Buy Cuban cigars - that's what I'll be doing with my Ocean's 13 pittance.

I'd rather support our godawful tobacco taxes than let those wankers try to dictate how our fair use should work.

Re:Awesome!

I'm in Canada. Cuban items are allowed for sale here. It was meant as a poke in the eye to their industry.

Seems straightforward to me

Well.... If they're interested in preventing pre-release copies being available, I guess it kind-of makes sense. Don't show movies in theaters that aren't enforcing camcorder bans, etc. If they're trying to prevent piracy in general, it's not going to help much.

Re:Seems straightforward to me

Most of the quality rips you find on bitorrent and such are actually ripped from inside the projection room as opposed to down in the audience. This won't cut back on pre-release copies in the slightest, and honestly I'd bet most of the copies floating around now are from the US and not Canada. This is mostly a PR thing to try and pressure the Canadian government into bending over and lubing up for the MPAA, and has nothing at all to do with piracy.

There's some other coverage on this....

... On theglobeandmail.com below:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20070508.WBmingram20070508112009/WBStory/WBmingra m [theglobeandmail.com]

The Globe And Mail is one of Canada's largest daily newspapers and has some amount of influence. Also, Mathew Ingram is somewhat influential in the "blogisphere" up north. I think he's hit the nail on the head. Too bad the studios won't be paying attention.

Go Team USA!

Within the first week of a film's release, you can almost be certain that somewhere out there a Canadian copy will show up.

Come, my fellow Americans, we can do this! We have a week to get our copy of Oceans Thirteen up! FTW!!

Re:Source ID

First, it amazes me that someone could continue to give credence to the movie industry's, when provided with a clear and concise debunking of those arguments such as Michael Geist's. Second, you're completely wrong. The movie studios tried to do marking of the type that you describe. In order to do it in a way that would allow it to work even after the movie had been camcorded and compressed, it was a pattern of big colored blobs visible to moviegoers. It failed, completely and utterly. If the studios put the identifying marks in unimportant scenese, the pirates cut it out of the video they released. If they put it in important scenes, fans complained. As far as I'm aware, those colored blobs aren't used anymore, for those two reasons. A video watermark that survives camcording and compression, such as what you describe, is as fictional as the the rest of the industry's arguments.

This, IMO, is a good first step....

All those thieving consumers out there need to be punished. I can only hope that the MPAA members carry forward with step #2 on their route to newfound profits: Stop releasing films, period. That will show those thieving consumers.

Stop 1 - Make movies
Stop 2 - Don't release them to the public
Stop 3 ........
Stop 4 profit! /sarcasm

Movie Piracy Helps Prevent Gun Crime

Come on, we all know that despite a similar or larger number of firearms per person in Canada that violent crime and gun crime in particular is much lower there. It is obvious that having the opportunity to get cheap pirate movies keeps Canadians from killing each other. As such, I call on the US government to decriminalise piracy. Won't someone please think of the children!

This is to give ammo

to Harpo to "harmonize" Canadian copyright laws with the U.S. This is part of his "deep integration" hidden agenda he's going to implement the second he gets a majority government. You know, all of those "extra" laws Canada has on the books that "hinder" trade? He's already sold the tar sands to the oil barons lock, stock and barrel.

Don't forget, the "piracy" claims come from an industry whose reputation for "creative accounting" is cited as examples of such in accounting textbooks!

Oh Dear

Can't say I was really looking forward to seeing Oceans Thirteen. Twelve just struck me as party amongst the upper echelons of Really Really Really Good Looking® society flouncing around in their "aren't we simply FABULOUS darling?" way while deigning to let us watch. One also gets tired of Mr. Clooney being the Sexiest Man In The History of This Planet or Any Other Since His Personal Image Consultant Taught Him to Stop Wiggling His Head Like That.

More to the point, if Warner thinks they can push Canada around with their fabricated numbers they are in for a surprise. The US isn't necessarily every Canadian's favourite country right now and bully tactics are likely to backfire. Plus, if Harper caves he will be judged as an American tody-boy and his Conservatives will find themselves back in the political outhouse for another 15 years, the same way they were after Mulroney sang Danny Boy to Regan like some desperately sycophantic wiener. Harper knows that so he won't be able to make our laws Just Like America, much as he'd love to.

You have to realize that Canada gave away a lot to get the softwood lumber deal, just to see American industry continue to sue us us, obstruct business, and pay off the government to ignore it's own obligations under NAFTA. Canadians are cheesed about this, among other things, so the idea of a puffed up American lawyer dictating how we should run our country is...unwelcome.

So to my American friends, don't worry, we'll take care of business on our end. It would really help, though, if you could slap these Napoleonic dweebs down a bit yourselves.

Ficiton? New word?

This community knows, thanks to Michael Geist, that the claim is mostly ficiton

ficiton (noun): an imaginary particle, spontaneously generated by media company executives (morons), to rationalize irrational behavior. The process of emitting and absorbing ficitons is termed con-fusion

.

At early screening they took everything electronic

I am in Canada, I saw an early promo screening of "Serenity" and the paranoia was laughable, they were confiscating anything electronic that might have a camera (cellphones etc..) and they came in several times to scan the audience. It was plain silly, I felt like I was in a police state.

I think they should actually follow through with the previous threat and delay all movies in Canada by two weeks, that will be long enough for everyone to get the real buzz on the movie and should result in substantially less people being suckered by hype. Then they can find someone else to blame.

But let's face it, this is not really about Canadians camcordering movies. This is all about greasing public opinion for an attempt to intro more draconian copyright laws in Canada so we can enjoy the benefits of industry lawyers threatening our 12 year old kids and grannies with lawsuits about something they might have infringed and then forking over the money because they are too scared to fight.

My hope is that our current minority government situation will make such draconian changes much more difficult to pass.

Re:That's Fiction, Not Ficiton

Learn how to spel.

I'm dylsexic you insnestitive cold!

Publicity Stunt by MPAA

That's all there is to this...the only people who will be hit by this are the movie critics, and the MPAA is hoping they will raise a fuss about this...I *hope* the critics have a clue about this, and don't take the bait....

ttyl
          Farrell