Arnold and Ottawa sitting in a tree

It was bound to happen sooner or later now that MPAA thug, Jack Valenti, has passed on.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger met with Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, and the Prime Minister of Canada, Steve Harper, to talk about issues relating to climate, stem-cell research, and Montréal camcording (despite the obvious poor quality of the said pirated films, and the widespread presence of clean professional industry screeners on mininova).

The Conservative government used Schwarzenegger's trip to Canada Wednesday, to placate Hollywood once again by promising to table the new hot button issue - anti-video piracy legislation.

Wait until Hollywood makes us sign a pact to enforce P2P services like they just did to South Korea.

Of course, Hollywood wouldn't be hurting so much if they just embraced the technology, and recouped lost monies through the use of targeted advertisement on torrent sites. You know what is being downloaded, you know the demographic. You know what advertisement to place before the download. You know who to give royalties to. Or come out with intelligent, forward thinking copyright legislation such as what Japan just proposed, instead of brow beating us with inflated statistics of Canadian piracy.

Besides, who wants to watch a crappy, shaky, camcorded version of Shrek 3 anyway? When you can find crappy, shaky, camcorded versions of FIDO.

Disclaimer: I'm not suggesting you download it, or condoning piracy in any shape or form, just that it is there, and that's the reality of it.

[via The Globe and Mail]