Canada film pirates sapping Hollywood profits

marygaspe

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MONTREAL (AFP) - Film piracy carried out with hand-held camcorders in movie theaters is a growing industry in Canada that is feeding international black markets and sapping Hollywood studios of billions of dollars in profits, the copyright industry says.
China and Russia pose "the greatest concern to the copyright industries," but "the problem of unauthorized camcording of films in Canadian theatres is now nearing crisis levels," the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) told US Trade Representative Susan Schwab in a letter this week.
"Pirates have taken advantage of the gaps in Canadian law to make it a leading exporter, both of camcorded masters that feed audio-visual piracy worldwide, and of devices ... that are intended to circumvent technological protection measures used by the publishers of entertainment software," the IIPA said in its recommendation to the US trade representative.
Funded by the American copyright industry, the IIPA asked Washington to place Canada on its "priority watch list," together with China, Russia and India.
"In 2005, an estimated 20 percent of pirated films on the international market came from Canada, a good percentage of them from Montreal," said Serge Corriveau, an investigator with Canada's film distributors association, closely linked to the big Hollywood studios.
US film makers put their revenue loss from worldwide film piracy at more than 6.1 billion dollars per year.
"Pirates always focus on blockbuster movies, but over the past few years more than 200 films have been camcorded (in Canada) and found in 45 different countries," said Corriveau.
The US movie industry says Canadian copyright laws are too lax when it comes to film piracy. While camcording a film at a movie theater is a crime in several US states, including California, in Canada it is not.
A film studio, distributor and theater owner can take someone caught in the act of camcording to a civil court, but criminal charges can only be brought if police can prove there was intention to distribute the pirated film copy.
"To prove intention requires more evidence. It's not enough to catch somebody filming inside a cinema; you have to have more evidence to get a search warrant, for example, to look through a computer. It's not easy," said Royal Canadian Mounted Police spokeswoman Helaine Lavergne.
Faced with this legal vacuum, movie house owners take matters in their own hands. At opening nights in Montreal, branded "Canada's piracy capital," some cinemas use metal detectors to discourage potential pirates.
A Canadian chain of multiplex cinemas went so far as to bar entry to people suspected of piracy.
And while Hollywood complains of huge losses from copyright infringement, the pirates say they are not in it for the money.
"There are so many people doing this nowadays. It's not true pirates make money out of this ... we do it for fun, to share the films among us. We also do it to screw with the American (film) studios. They can't complain, they've got plenty of money," two pirates said in an interview with the Journal de Montreal daily.


Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse.
 
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TenPenny

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Two comments.
1 - just how much profit do do we think the studios are losing? Anyone who foists such artists as Jessica Simpson on us should have to pay US, not the other way round.

2 - has anyone who has ever suffered through a hand-held movie copy ever watched a second one?
 
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snowles

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Scholars like Michael Geist have already debunked these myths that the IIPA claim. Their fictional number of 20% of these cam films coming from Canada is simply a reduced number from 50% a couple of years ago, and has steadily been reduced as people call BS on it.

Additionally, the number 6.1 billion is entirely fabricated and has not been met with even one explanation of how they have arrived at that number. They are assuming that everyone who may have watched a film would have paid full theatre price for it (and not rental price or DVD price), and that they indeed had properly downloaded and watched the filmm and not a faked renamed file or an empty data file.

On top of that, who in their right mind wants a cam version of a movie? It's absolutely rubbish; blurry, tiny picture, with hollow, tinny audio. I'll pass, thanks. How much money can possibly be made from these by the producers? The problem is between those who sell them on the black market in asia, and the studios who supress movie releases for upwards of half a year.

There has to be a better solution than what exists now; I'm not paying upwards of $40 for a 90-minute DVD, especailly when the price justification is the 'extras' that I have never watched, and have no interest in watching. The average cost to produce a DVD, from start to end, is estimated at $3US, and is only playable in certain parts of the world - and I still have to buy all of the necessary equipment in order to operate it with any sense of quality. When it comes to blockbuster movies, almost all have already turned a profit from merely US theatre sales alone - when adding on worldwide theatre profits and DVD sales, they becomes completely profit on top of the original investment; how that can be construed as a loss is beyond me.

Movie studios must realize that piracy will always exist; by making the product more readily available and more affordable to the masses, they will reduce the number of those who rely on downloading as their only access to the movie. There's lots of ways to do this:

1. Offer 'movie only' version of DVDs for $10-$15. Movies that have been released more than 2 years ago must be offered on a 'sliding-scale' of price - there is no way that DVD prices should remain constant despite age; it doesn't work with my car salesman, so why does it work here?

2. Allow for the downloading of movies in the same way as Itunes; and consider that the user has to pay for the player, the internet, the computer, the media to burn it onto and the bandwidth, and would not have a physical copy, the cost per movie should be limited to less than $5 each, or a subscription rate.

3. Bump up release dates so that consumers have faster access to new movies while still fresh and relevant, instead of waiting half a year and growing impatient.

4. Stop demonizing everyone who downloads as a sinner thief; many of these people are your best customers who spend thousands annually at bloated theatres where three penies worth of popcorn costs $6, and thousands more on box sets and special edition DVDs that they purchased because they loved the downloaded DVD-rip. This method of sharing has been around more than a decade, and VCRs were available 20 years before that - yet the industry surives and thrives. Despite its advances, DIVX, XVID and shrunk DVD-imaged movies still pale in comparison quality-wise to original digital DVDs.

5. Knock it off with the unethical practice of illegally suing John and Jane Does. It's a disgrace to law (and reeks of coersion) that it is even permitted, and the only two cases that have ever made it to US court have sided swiftly with the defendent.

6. Stop making up numbers, and forming redundent committees that serve little-to-no purpose. Stop with the hyperbole and use of words like 'crisis', and Jack Valenti's arguement that "[T]he VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone," all while pulling in 1.3 million dollars in salary annually.

7. Stop ignoring that Canadians pay a levy on blank media (upwards of 50% of the store cost) and assume guilt in doing so without an opt-out clause or a signed waiver being offered, and despite what they use the disc for. If laws change, the cost of the media must be reflected to show that levy being dropped; likewise, any and all items downloaded before the change cannot be included in any impending civil suits, as the previous downloads have been paid for and compensated by the levy. Additionally, start paying out the $150 MILLION dollars from this levy that has yet to be paid out to artists, and sits in CRIA coffers for almost a decade.

8. Stop trying to attach laws that would penalize anyone from having anything to do with a movie in a non-DVD form, and focus solely on those who are copying it upon its theatrical release on a for-profit basis. The bills against camming would pass if the lobbying groups weren't trying to attach several other bills allowing studios to blindly sue everyone with an Internet connection.

I really wish reporters would get out there and try to do a little fact-finding, instead of plagarising articles taken straight from CRIA, MPAA and IIPA press releases. It smacks of sloppy journalism and biased reporting.
 
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sanctus

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"Canada film pirates sapping Hollywood profits "

Aw, shucks, I guess life is over with, then. :roll:

Frankly, I don't feel all that sorry for Hollywood either.The high prices of movies and the out-of-bounds salaries they pay some of the actors are their own fault. It is much cheaper to get a bootleg movie then to go the the theatre. Last time the wife, the kids and I went to a movie together we spent easily up to60-70 dollars by the time we were out of the place.
 

Zzarchov

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When the entertainment industry destroyed the entertainer industry which couldn't keep up with new technology, we didn't hold its hand and keep it alive. We told it tough nuggets, if you can't survive as a business you get no special protection, even if you are part of our culture.

Then the entertainment industry insults us for 75 years, replacing culture in talent with skimpy clothing and sexual innuendos..and it too starts to get replaced by technology.


What has it does that we should protect it when we didn't protect its predecessor?
 

Curiosity

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I thought piracy was a Hollywood byword.... they haven't had an original thought in years much less a movie plot. Thank god for the U.K. and International film-makers.
 

DurkaDurka

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I can understand Hollywood wanting to protect their intellectual content but they go about it in all the wrong ways.

Hollywood has alienated a large proportion of their viewing audience due to excessive copy protection on their dvd's, cannot legally run on linux. To HD/DVD-BlueRay which has the most restrictive content protection ever.

These types of protection to their media cause your regular paying customer to either crack their content protection and rip the movie into a format of their choosing or download it from a p2p network.
 

tanakar

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I thought piracy was a Hollywood byword.... they haven't had an original thought in years much less a movie plot. Thank god for the U.K. and International film-makers.


Right on! As one movie fan, I don't care much for hollywood movies as I am not that interested in movies which are basically based on either remakes of old movies or 1960's sitcoms.
 

mabudon

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Snowles- MAN that was a fine post!!

I really can't even address it as a whole, but the most striking aspect you mentioned is the levy on blank media- I sort of always forget about this one- if you actually buy blank media, you are getting ripped off if you do NOT do something illegal with it, the way it stands now.

And the whole "losses" thing is an odd one to me, to- I remember a couple of years ago, the Icewine harvest was messed up by the weather, and the Industry mad esome appeal for help.. the weather caused the crop to be half of what had been expected (and the expectations were somthing like 4-fold growth, so effectively the actual quantity produced was double the previous year) and yet the situation was sold as a "loss".... I just thought it was odd, since youcan't really "lose" something you never had in the first place..

I think that is the same kind of "loss" that is often referenced in articles like the one at the top, a pprojection based on nothing fails to come true, so the amount by which it falls short gets called a "loss" rather than some sort of failure or perhaps even "gross over-estimation" which in this case would be more applicable... besides, it's easier to explain how thieves stole from you and drove the numbers down than it is to admit you totally over-hyped the expected outcome
 

Curiosity

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DurkaDurka/Tanakar

LOL - there's an oxymoron if I ever saw one: Hollywood's "intellectual content"..... notwithstanding their movies are geared to the concept of thirteen year olds...
 

DurkaDurka

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DurkaDurka/Tanakar

LOL - there's an oxymoron if I ever saw one: Hollywood's "intellectual content"..... notwithstanding their movies are geared to the concept of thirteen year olds...

The majority of what Hollywood produces is crap I agree. there is the occaisonal good film to come out of there though. Kevin Smith films I enjoy, which typically do not follow your hollywood movie formula.
 

snowles

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Thanks for the kind words mabudon, this is a subject I feel pretty strongly about.

My personal idea for how this country can integrate both ideas into a usable frame would be to scrap the blank media levy and instead institute a "downloading licence," similar to the TV licence tax that has been in use in Britain for the past 30 years. Pass laws banning camming in theatres, and pursue those who are involved in the trade for profit with criminal misconduct, and not the end users - the police have far more pressing issues in our society than dealing with downloaders, and this has been more than voiced out in the amount of apathy the IIPA and the CRIA have been met with, and justifiably so.

Now, as for my plan, charge a set annual rate based on what you plan to download (for instance, a just-music one, or an all-encompasing one), and just let those who are going to download do it. Spread the money gained from the licence around to all of the studios and the artists and the publishers in a transparent and open manner for all those to see, and leave people alone. As an aside, music artists must see more than two percent of profits from a CD sale (notice how the almost unanimously support p2p); I would love to see a way for me to be able to directly send the artist $10 for their work over the Internet after downloading it, rather than seeing them get nothing while the label makes all of the profit.

Meanwhile, those who use media for other purposes will not be made to admit guilt, and those who wish to download can compensate the artists and the studios in a way that is reflective of the amount of capital and effort already being spent by the end user, and the lack of capital spent by the studios with digital copies (read: nothing). Such a model would allow those like myself to feel like we are justifying the downloading, while adequately compensating the studios and the artists for the truly awesome work they do. Additionally, compensation for damages can only be requested if the person does not have a proper licence (perhaps as determined by the ISP), and give the offender 10 days to purchase one or face fines (much in the same way as a snowmobile permit).

If the fee was between $75-$100 annually, I think that would be a number where people could easily digest it, especially if you could spread it out, or have it included with your Internet bill (about $6-8 a month, no more than cell phone 'system access fees'). The studios would be more than adeqautely compensated (especially in relation to their costs involved) as the totals would exceed the tens of millions in Canada alone annually; considering they would have nothing to provide to the end user aside from actually making the movie, the profit involved would be almost total.

If say 5 million people download questionable content from the Internet (which is a pretty conservative number), at $100 a pop annually, even if only 80% of people paid into the system, the amount generated would exceed $400 million annually in Canada alone, before taxes.

Thoughts?
 
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Curiosity

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Snowles....

Well done - great post....and a satisfatory solution to the problem...

Nothing to add from my empty head....you've said it all.... but I'm gonna give you a rep on that one!
 
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blugoo

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First, I have to second mabudon (and now it seems everyone else) on congratulating Snowles for a great post...

Hollywood needs to stop making up bogus numbers and exaggerating, in order to manufacture a crisis. The movie industry is alive and well, last time I checked. This is also the absolute wrong way to do business. By alienating, suing, and otherwise fighting with consumers, they just foster a "screw you" type of attitude with the public.
 

DurkaDurka

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Skowles, the online content delivery system is great in theory, but...

1. Would this download license/fee cover both standard definition & high definition content?
2. Would the media be wrapped in all sorts of DRM ?
3. I wouldn't trust an ISP to enforce copyright laws.
4. Would the movies be streamed or would it be an exact image of the movie so it could be burned?


I think your idea is great, unfortunately the studios are too damn paranoid and greedy to sell their content in the fashion you mentioned.
 
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snowles

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Thanks Curio and blugoo for the positive support, and I agree with you completely blugoo on the attitudes that have been fostered.

We see the elderly and children being sued a completely disproportionate amount in the US with no evidence whatsoever besides an IP address and a John Doe civil suit, and these people are goaded into paying smaller fines to avoid ridiculous court fees and the possibility of losing - the studios and the MPAA and CRIA wonder why they are demonized! For many people, I believe, they download as a way to get back at the studios for this type of behaviour; what results is behaviour that is cyclical and completely non-fostering of any growth or cooperation, from both sides.

Plus yay! I've never gotten feedback before! Thanks everyone!
 
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Cobalt_Kid

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First, I have to second mabudon (and now it seems everyone else) on congratulating Snowles for a great post...

Hollywood needs to stop making up bogus numbers and exaggerating, in order to manufacture a crisis. The movie industry is alive and well, last time I checked. This is also the absolute wrong way to do business. By alienating, suing, and otherwise fighting with consumers, they just foster a "screw you" type of attitude with the public.

They've had a "screw you" type mentality for generations. Hollywood has held a virtual monopoly over what's seen on Canadian screens and now they want to dictate what our copywrite laws are as the media moves online. This isn't about crappy camcorder piracy, once again it's about controling access to the very lucrative theatre market which because of the internet is now moving into peoples homes.
 

snowles

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Skowles, the online content delivery system is great in theory, but...

1. Would this download license/fee cover both standard definition & high definition content?
2. Would the media be wrapped in all sorts of DRM ?
3. I wouldn't trust an ISP to enforce copyright laws.
4. Would the movies be streamed or would it be an exact image of the movie so it could be burned?


I think your idea is great, unfortunately the studios are too damn paranoid and greedy to sell their content in the fashion you mentioned.

I agree that with the paranoia and the traditionalism in today's studio system it would never fly, but eventually they have to come to realize that they are fighting a never-ending battle, and are losing out now not just in their wallets, but in the legal system as well. Two cases just made it to court in the US (after almost 7,000 civil lawsuits were 'settled' in the US since 1995), and both found against the studios tactics to obtain information; the claimants lost and the defendents are in the midst of receiving compensation for legal costs and work lost. It seems to me that it would be in the studios' best interests to adapt and cooperate with the end-user, before laws and precedent internationally render them completely useless.

In answering your questions:

1. I believe that in the beginning, a all-included approach to high-definition programming would work; as the technology advances, standard def will more than likely be phased out anyways, and the costs would reflect that (much in the same way as cell phone carrier like Rogers switch completely to GSM technology and phase out all TDMA). Perhaps some of the costs gained by a fee could go into phasing out standard def programming.

2. No, it should not be cloacked with DRM, though perhaps encrypting each file with your licence number would allow the file playback on any computer you so chose. Or being able to log into an Itunes style site with your licence number and download the content that you choose to.

3. I wouldn't be expecting the ISP to enforce copyright laws, that is the matter of the courts and the legislature. I would, however expect the ISPs to enforce the licencing, or perhaps refer to a Canadian regulatory committee that would dispense and enforce the issuing of the licence for all Canadian ISPs. We have no issues doing it with vehicle registration with our car, so I see no reason why we should take offense to it for downloading.

4. In a perfect world, I would rather see DVDR images, but I know that the time and size of these images would turn many people off. Offering the images in both DVDR and Divx images would allow users to get the content the way they want, as the current laws say we are entitled to. Purchasing a licence would allow not only for regulated content, but also cover things like torrent sites and p2p.