Well this didn't take very long (I thought a day was forever in politics?).
Bill C-59 was announced on Friday by Industry Minister Maxime Bernie and our esteemed Heritage Minister, Bev Oda. The new bill proposes to change the criminal code to make it illegal to camcord a film without the theatre managers consent, upon penalty of death.
[via Playback Magazine]
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]
Warner has stopped all promotional screenings of its film releases, and shifted all press screenings to its HQ theatre (which seems like a just a bit of an over reaction), because of fear of its films being "camcorded".
If they stop all their films, maybe we can we squeeze a few small Canadian films in their place.
Actually, I'll go as far as saying that all American film companies should stop theatrical releases here. Maybe then, after weeks and weeks of mediocre films playing non-stop across the nation, the public outcry will be so loud that we're bound to give a filmmaker enough money to make a good movie.
Just a thought.
Most likely we'll just beg the Americans to come back so we can see some explosions and fire and actors we recognize.
Via the Globe and Mail.
