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Canadian Movie Camcording Addressed With Legislation
dottyslashdottydot writes "During Arnold Schwarzenegger's visit to Ottawa yesterday, it was confirmed that Prime Minister Stephen Harper will be introducing a bill to make camcording in movie theaters illegal in Canada. However, people are skeptical that this will make any difference in the amount of pirated movies available. Doug Frith, president of the Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association was quoted as saying, 'is really the first step — not only for the movie industry — where the government has shown it will seriously address the whole area of intellectual-property theft.'"
Anyway, it seems preposterous to assume anything can be done about camcording: it can only have an effect if all attempted camcordings of a given movie are prevented. A single recording provides an infinite supply of pirated copies. This is even more hopeless than the War on Drugs.
This is even more hopeless than the War on Untaxed Drugs
fixed.
Living With a Nerd
It's a big deal because it's a first step to trying to bring Canadian copyright protections to a level the media companies are happy with. We have a set of laws that have a decent amount of balance between protecting the property rights holder and protecting the consumer. There's tremendous pressure from various interest groups to change our copyright laws to bring in things like provisions in the US DMCA without fair use guarantees. So while this by itself is a very small thing, it opens the door into a much bigger deal.
Idiot, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant
For, say, 1990. Seriously, what decade are these people living in?
Pirated copies don't come from some idiot wielding a camcorder, they come digital copies usually leaked from within the industry itself. "Review copy" only means "my kid will be torrenting this in three hours, here it comes."
And the minimum wage salary surf shining a flashlight on people fondling each other is now a also a policeman? If a guy holding an illegal recording device looks able enough to abuse a baby seal and isn't bothering anyone, what possible incentive does a theater have to confront them?
This type of legislation is a cry for help on the part of the legislator. It's a sign they're so out of touch it's not even funny.
A foreign cartel forcing a supposedly sovereign nation to change their law according to their whims, THAT is a big deal.
You can't take the sky from me...
What's the big deal? I can tell you. If you only know the previews and ads and teasers, you might think it's a great movie.
After you've seen the movie, in whatever crappy quality, you know that those 30 seconds of previews, ads and teasers actually were ALL the good parts of the movie. Are you gonna go watch it and pay for it?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Minority government.
Election coming sooner rather than later.
It will die on the order paper if it ever gets there.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Stop calling it "intellectual property theft"? It's copyright violation. "Property theft" implies stealing someone's tangible goods (or ideas) and passing it off as your own, which is clearly not what's going on here. It's an unauthorized reproduction (and possibly public display or sale) of an artistic work.
I love minority governments. Nothing gets done, and thus nothing gets fucked up!
All praise Canada's multi-party system!
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.