No, really. I heard it from a representative of the CRIA (the Canadian arm of the RIAA) on the radio yesterday and confirmed it at a website here:
**“As much as 50 per cent of the world’s pirated movies come from Canada, prompting the film industry to threaten to delay the release of new titles in this country”. **
That’s shocking! There are over 200 countries in the world and we are outdoing countries like Taiwan, China, Russia, the States, India and Malaysia combined.
How are we doing it? By cheating. Instead of using expensive duplication facilities to copy movies as soon as they are released to theatres (sometimes while the movies are in transit), or getting copies of DVD screeners before the movies come out, we simply camcorder the screen.
I have a couple questions though:
Has anyone every watched a wobbly camcorded movie from a crowded movie theater?
If the CRIA delays releasing movies in Canada because of our 50% piracy rate, is that going to encourage or discourage piracy?
p.s. I hope I got the right forum, if not feel free to move it.
I have a somewhat decent copy of “Star Trek: Generations” that was the product of camcorder-movie screen.
It’s wobbly, nasty, and you can hear the audience laughing.
But it was five bucks.
This was, of course, before the advent of digital movie reproduction, and I’d never do it again. The side of my sliding scale labeled “desire to watch it now” has been permanently underweighted by the quality of DVD and bittorrent.
All these years we’ve been unsuccesfully trying to find ways to reduce the bombarment of Canada by Hollywood crapola, when all along all we had to do to get them to reduce the flow was pirate what they send us. Who’d a thunk it.
Camcorded movies are horrible. Wobbly recording, people wandering in front of the screen, people talking, and of course, the echoing audio. If you want to watch a movie that badly that you’ll suffer the big screen experience on a small screen with lousy sound, I humbly submit that you really need to find a better hobby. Or at least have the patience to wait for the screener.
I’d rather wait for the real DVD if I like the movie and really want to see it. Even the ripped one-CD screeners tend to look pretty bad compared to the real DVD – the massive compression required to bring a 4+ gig DVD (larger if it’s dual layer) down under 800 megs really takes its toll. It’s fine on a smalls screen though – I’ve ripped some of my DVDs and TV series to watch on my PDA at 512x384 and they look great. But that’s the only circumstance under which I’ll deal with movie rips – and I’d rather rip them myself from the original DVDs 'cos I can optimize the quality.
As for whether or not delaying releases here will halt piracy, the answer is a very firm no! It’ll just start coming out from somewhere else that it’s released, then someone else can take credit for supplying 50% of the world’s pirated movies. Pretty soon it’ll be delayed everywhere and we can start the ride all over again until the only place you can see a movie in it the screening room of the movie studio.
Aren’t they always? This is the MPAA/MPDA we’re talking about. Any possible study, regardless of how unsubstantiated or outright fabricated, is fodder for their anti-piracy propaganda machine as long as it’s quotable. Independent reviews? Factual cites from credible sources? Numbers that actually mean something? Goodness, there’s no time for that, the movie industry is foundering under billions in lost revenue from rampant Canadian pirates with cheap camcorders! Bend over, curl off some numbers and print that sucker! Not even the critics can yell loud enough to drown out our whining, so no one will know the difference!
Of course, makes perfect sense to me. 50% comes from Canada, 50% from the US, 50% from China, 50% from Taiwan, the other 50% from Mexico, and the remaining 275% from EU.
I’m basing these numbers on the assumption that their math is no better than RIAA
I never knew that Canada was such a lawless wild frontier land with 50% of the world’s movie piracy. I am going to start wearing my cowboy boots year round.
Maybe if the US film industry delays introduction of Hollywood titles, English Canada can finally escape from the shadow of the big US distribution companies and become its own market, instead of being considered part of the US “domestic” market, and we can see our own stories up on the silver screen.
Goin’ Down The Road II: The heartwarming sequel to Don Shebib’s original classic. Now, the boys leave Nova Scotia not for Toronto but for Fort MacMurray, where once again, they drink, chase women, drink, lose their jobs, drink, and go home.
Or there’s:
Yet Another Atom Egoyan/Don McKellar Art Film: Atom directs and Don stars in something–we’re not sure what–that all the critics are acclaiming, all the cogniscenti are talking about, and all the ordinary people who see movies for entertainment are staying far, far away from.
Naw, I think we’ll have to improve our own stories first.
Oh, I quite agree. Having been a member of LIFT for a time, I’ve seen that there’s quite a community of English-language screenwriters in Canada. But it’d be nice not to have to go to LA to be successful.
What, you didn’t like that flick about the naked dude running about on ice flows? I thougt it was terrific. There’s a lot of great stuff out there that seldom gets seen.
Maybe the Canadian film industry/National Film Board/Sheridan College school of animation/Vancouver Film School/Ryerson University film school/etc should have their own TV channel.
Oh, wait. That’s what the CBC is supposed to be for.
