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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.
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.
Slow Down, Cowboy! It's been 60 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment.
... but where the hell is the correlation between a preview and a pirated full copy of a movie?
We figured out a long time ago that it's easier to elect seven judges than to elect 132 legislators.
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..
MABASPLOOM!
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.
Now what can we do as a nation to get them to pull their crappy movies from our theaters?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
... On theglobeandmail.com below:
M .20070508.WBmingram20070508112009/WBStory/WBmingra m
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGA
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.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
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!!
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!
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
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
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.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
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
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
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".