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Behind the Scenes of Canada's Movie Piracy Law
An anonymous reader writes "Michael Geist's latest Toronto Star column features a behind-the-scenes look at how Canada got its movie piracy bill based on internal government documents obtained under the Access to Information Act. Few will be shocked to learn that Hollywood lobbyists provided draft legislation months earlier as part of their barrage of lobbying, though the documents show that advisers to the Minister were skeptical that the proposal would accomplish anything. From the article: 'The industry's lobby efforts were clearly successful. Ignoring the inconsistent claims, the absence of evidence that Canadian films are being affected, the contrary internal advice, and the bracing reality that Hollywood has acknowledged that the U.S. is by far the largest source of illegal camcording worldwide notwithstanding its movie piracy legislation, Bill C-59 is expected to sail through Parliament. In doing so, Ottawa is sending Canadians two messages. The first is what drew the industry standing ovation - unauthorized camcording will not be tolerated in Canada even if it means diverting law enforcement resources from health and safety issues to movie theatres. The second is that private meetings, foreign pressures and lobbyist drafted bills is how law gets made in Canada.'"
"even if it means diverting law enforcement resources from health and safety issues to movie theatres"
I'd rather not do that... to me, health and safety is worth more than money.
~/.sig: No such file or directory
And this is news? Come on, you don't really think Canada (or any other "civilized" country is soverign, do you? What Hollywood (or any big business, for that matter) wants, they get, governments be damned. Face it, the only vote anyone on this planet really has is measured by how much money they have in their wallet.
The bill, at Bill C-59 says that it's only a crime if the theatre manager says so.
This allows the manager to set his own camera up in the projection room, which is conveient, but not as convenient as running the film through a scanner or the DVD through a duplicator.
Perhaps the drafters think that theatre managers can't be bribed?
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
They bought it.
No one should be the least bit surprised. Its how governments work now.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
The first is what drew the industry standing ovation - unauthorized camcording will not be tolerated in Canada even if it means diverting law enforcement resources from health and safety issues to movie theatres. A nice exaggeration if I ever saw one... Anyhow. To be the devil's advocate here, has anyone taken the time to do some research on where bootleg movies come from? Before people anywhere start shooting off at the mouth, they should take a look at where the vast majority of RECORDED movies comes from. Then they should focus on fixing that solution. Implementing moronic laws such as "No Camcorder Left Behind" lobbied by deep pocketed Hollywood sharks will never fix the problem. Common logic will dictate survival of the fittest with this said let me be an usher at a movie theater. Let someone come in with a camcorder... My wage is say $15.00 per hour as an usher... Someone is paying me $1000.00 to play Ray Charles/Stevie Wonder. Guess what? Survival of the fittest. This is anywhere you go.
The second is that private meetings, foreign pressures and lobbyist drafted bills is how law gets made in Canada. Unless the one who posted this has been living in a bomb shelter for the past 50 years... Has anyone ever noticed that businesses have been dictating laws since the inception of time? Coca Cola and others did similar things in Latin America once upon a time, Airbus in France, and countless other companies here in the US. Get over it.
Infiltrated dot Net
There's really not much that these new laws will do aside from giving Canadians early screenings again. It'll be good to see movies earlier once more and I'm sure that Pacific Mall will not be put to any real danger by this new act. Yes it's sad that more money and resources are wasted on this futile jesture, but the baby needs it's bottle.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper? Isn't he the guy who, when IDF warplanes killed UN Canadian Peacekeepers said "Well, what were they doing there anyway?"
Wonder if he's going to give the Canadian people back their CD levies? ($0.29 per unit for Audio Cassette tape (40min or longer); $0.77 per unit for CD-R Audio, CD-RW-Audio & MiniDisc; $0.21 per unit for CD-R, CD-RW (non audio) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy )
Stop voting for people like this. It only encourages them.
I thought this whole business was remarkably clever of the Canadian government. They managed to sidestep a messy showdown with Hollywood by outlawing something that isn't a problem. Seriously, our movie theatres are not giant igloos, and pirating movies on a camcorder hasn't been an issue for a decade or more (has it ever been?). These days pirated movies usually come from stolen or "borrowed" cinema masters.
Given the choice between having Hollywood lobbying against something stupid, like a camcorder ban, or something more serious, like a DMCA equivalent, I'd much rather pacify them with the stupid stuff.
The reason the law passed is because it is useless.
Provinces are responsible for law enforcement - they'll just ignore it as another idiotic Ottawa publicity stunt.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I find it funny that celibs think that because the can sing a song or make a movie, their opinion is more important than the opinion of other people...Bono is hypocritical when he expects governments to increase their AIDS funding to Africa and continue down the road of debt forgiveness using tax payer money when he moves his business out of Ireland because he was paying too much tax...I am getting very tired of being told what I should think and feel from people who just happen to be an entertainer!!!! GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR !!!!!
Not that I necessarily agree with your sentiment, but it reminded me of a joke I heard while watching the election coverage up there during the last election (I was living in Western New York at the time and got Canadian stations).
"What the Canadian people really want are two Liberal parties - one to vote into office when the other becomes too corrupt to governern."
Well, it's all a measure of evil.
The liberals will generally do nothing about anything, anytime. The conservatives will screw things up worse and sell out to the US at the drop of a drool-covered hat. The NDP doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell at getting elected, but if they did, they'd attack business to the extent that the economy would tank. Then there's the Bloc, which should be illegal since they're a regional separatist party dedicated to destroying the country. Ironically, the Green party (which should by definition be a dedicated single-issue party) actually has a very comprehensive and well thought-out platform, but they haven't got a single seat in their history.
All things considered, doing nothing is not bad. Not good, but not bad.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Almost daily there is news in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) of crimes, including murder, committed with hand guns. Legally obtaining a handgun in Canada is very difficult (and has been since the mid 1930's), so the vast majority of these hand guns are illegal imports from the USA.
:(
I wish governments and big business on *both* sides of the border would devote as much attention, time and money to the issue of illegal handgun imports into Canada as they do about movie piracy. I don't know about the rest of you people, but I am a lot more afraid of somebody walking into a local movie theatre here in Canada with an illegal handgun than an illegal camcorder. Are movies worth more than lives anymore?
The other issue to me, one that Hollywood & the studios and others never address, is that for me and my family (two adults, two children) to go see a movie in a theatre today, with admission, parking, car gas, popcorn, drinks, etc, etc, I'll spend at least $100. I don't have that kind of money to go as often as I would like too. Sorry Hollywood, but this month the car needed fixing and the kids needed dental work. I am sure most of you have similar stories. I am also pretty peaved that the very fews times I do go to a movie theatre, I have to sit through several minutes of commercials for an event I PAY to attend. This turns me off completely. Are you guys litening out there?
But I will and do buy DVDs.
With everybody buying larger and larger TVs, home theatre systems, etc, etc, why not release DVDs of new movies at the same time as they are released in theatres? I imagine you would kill off a lot of piracy right there and then. I don't have the big screen LCD TV myself (yet), but someday when I do, I'd rather stay home and watch movies in the comfort of my own house.
Movie distribution today is bascially a very flawed business model due to many factors, including some of those listed above,a nd trying to place the blame on piracy will do nothing to help. Wake up and smell the coffee.
It's not that everyone thinks it should be OK to videotape movies, it's that the law is completely unreasonable. First, it's been bought and paid for by Hollywood from day one with inconsistent and laughably bad data. Second, the laws are already in place to stop it, what these laws do is make the penalties completely unreasonable. $2 million for videotaping a movie? That's ridiculous. Third, the laws have proven to be completely useless everywhere else. Finally, the biggest source of piracy isn't camcorders in movie theaters, it's critics, industry insiders and Chinese workers.
Anyone who thinks this is about people bringing cameras into a theater is an idiot.
I have no problem with lobbying groups supplying draft legislation. It is better that legislation be written by somebody that has knowledge of the topic in question rather than a lawmaker just pulling it out of his ass. I believe that most bills affecting the private sector do come from lobbying groups of some sort.
That doesn't mean that this law was in any way useful or good (it isn't), but the fact that it was written by a lobbyist is not inherently evil. If the FSF had pushed for a bill requiring the govt. to consider Free Software for all procurement purchases over $X, I don't think Slashdot would be screaming.
Of course, that does not absolve lawmakers from their responsibility to look over any proposed legislation and suggest it be modified or tanked...
SirWired
Oh, don't worry. The lines will be longer for a little while, but only 'til people are so fed up with being considered a criminal for wanting to watch a movie that even more refuse to go to the cinemas anymore.
And of course, this will all be blamed on the evil pirates. Instead of adding police state methodes on top of overpriced tickets and crappy movies without a script worth the name.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I hope you know something I don't. With regards to the anti-camcording bill, the head of the Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association[2] said it "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." Reports are that the government intends to go ahead with a DMCA-style "reform". Bev Oda, one of the two ministers responsible for copyright, has previously said Canada will ratify international treaties, implying that includes the WIPO treaty on which the DMCA is based[1]. The 2007-2008 Report on Plans and Priorities lists "copyright reform" as a priority to which the government has "previously committed". Given the
On the up side, now is not the time to give up: the significant opposition to stronger copyright provisions seems be having an effect. While the RPP's statement on the issue points towards anti-circumvention legislation and a flawed conception of copyright as a simple conflict between creators and consumers (when in fact there are creators on both sides, and citizens and the public interest are directly affected), it avoids committing to any paricular course of action:
I wrote to her in January and received a similarly ambiguous reply: "the Government is continuing to consider the concerns of all Canadians . . . The Government wants to ensure that the rights of Canadian creators are adequately protected by law, and that these rights are balanced with the ability of the public to access works."
[1] I should point out that Canada is under no obligation to ratify the WIPO treaty. Even if we do, the treaty's anti-circumvention provisions don't require all of the excesses of the DMCA:
[2] For the most part we don't make Canadian films, we distribute American ones. For the distributors, maximalist intellectual monopoly laws are in their interests even if they inhibit the production of Canadian films.
How is listening to foreign lobbyists over your own people and banning something that isn't a problem a "clever move"?
It is a clever move to toss them a bone rather than having them agitate for your entire skeleton, especially when the bone you toss is meaningless and costs you nothing.
What inferno? The MPAA can't do jack against another country, and they aren't going to stop releasing movies in Canada if this doesn't pass.
Did you honestly just say "the MPAA can't do jack against another country" without giggling? Why don't you ask a Swede how they feel about the MPAA's influence in their country? You might come away better informed.
Canada's exhibitor industry exists only by the leave of the various American movie associations who sell them content. I've been e-mailing back and forth with a friend who works for one of the major studios here, and I can tell you that around their office they're damn thankful at how this turned out because the alternative meant possible industry action, which threatens their paycheques directly (she's in exhibitor relations).
In this situation, the Americans hold all the cards. They own the movies, and in most cases they own the movie theatres.
Negotiating with bullies so that they're under the impression you've conceded to their demands when in fact nothing has changed is a clever move. It's called diplomacy, and it works.
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