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Canada Responsible for 50% of Movie Piracy
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."
Benton Frasier would never do this.
Looks like the South Park gang was right after all.
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They're going to delay movie releases to combat piracy? Brilliant!
1) Hollywood says Canada is responsible for 50% of all piracy.
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?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
..we're not a real country anyway.
Blerg.
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?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
We're obviously going to need to declare war on Canada. This aggression will not stand.
Piracy is IP Terrorism.
Canada probably doesnt give a crap if their film releases get delayed. They will see them when they're released right? Hollywood needs Canada's money more than Canada needs Hollywood's film releaes in theaters. Besides.. by releasing the films later in Canada, more Canadians will be forced to download them illegally.
Treat people like they're criminals, and they will become criminals.
The Globe and Mail fell for this too, back on the 7th as Pirates of the Canadians
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
davecb@spamcop.net
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.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
I would say that illegal copying of movies and music proves the cost of these media to be, in fact, more than the market will bear. If the market would bear these prices then there wouldn't be (many) people trying to find ways to pay less. But because the current prices are so much higher than most are willing to pay for what they are receiving, they have found a way to get the content they want at a price they feel is reasonable (nothing). This seems to imply that something is wrong with the current business model of media providers. Instead of recognizing this fact, lawmakers have been duped into believing that media providers should be guaranteed a profitable business. The market seems to disagree with both.
His point is simple: if you have a previously profitable business model, and it suddenly becomes unprofitable, you are shit out of luck. For example: at one point, much of the economy of Hawaii was dependent on cane sugar. This sugar was being sold on the mainland, primarily, because let's face it, there aren't a lot of people in Hawaii, relatively speaking. It wasn't long before some enterprising farmers realised that sugar cane grows remarkably well in California, and that by producing it in California, they saved big bucks on transportation and labour costs. The result? Cheaper sugar, and they undercut the Hawaiians.
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
I'd rather have both a piracy tax AND habeas corpus instead of having neither.
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