I was very careful to write “rogue” and not “rouge” 
Looked it up in a dictionary and everything.
I, for one, won’t be satisfied until we pirate up to 99% of movies. Go Canada!
Well, that finally explains why that film I bought on the street was titled, “Something Aboot Mary.”
Okay, someone in Quality Control is going to get a STERN talking-to!
Shh - we’re still behaving all polite and courteous IN PUBLIC - it’s the best cover ever!
You know the reason why I would start buying pirated DVDs (and my husband and I buy a healthy amount of legal DVDs)? To get rid of the friggin’ ads and previews that you can’t skip over. That just toasts my cheese - I bought this MOVIE fair and square - you can keep your goddamned advertising.
That’s a good point. Downloaded music and movies are actually more valuable than commercial stuff because they don’t have all the artificial restrictions (DRM) that make them hard to use. I have a pile of MP3s that I paid for and downloaded legally a couple of years ago. I keep them seperate because those are the ones that won’t play anymore.
This article discusses pending changes to Canada’s copyright laws. We currently have a balanced system, and the entertainment industry wants it to be a one way street going their way. Looks like they may succeed. The problem is most people have no idea that this is an issue that is important to them. The is a website to show dissent here.
All people know is RIAA propaganda - “Stealing music and video takes food out of the mouths of artists’ children’s mouths!” They conveniently never mention how little musicians actually make because of the huge percentage the record companies take, etc. There was a reason that Prince went around for a while with the word “SLAVE” written on his face, and it wasn’t completely because he’s nuts. They also never get into things like profits might have gone down in the movie industry because they keep putting out recycled garbage starring Mel Gibson’s ginormous, $25 million ego (and I don’t even know if profits are down or not). Oh no, those things have nothing to do with it - all of their problems are because of DOWNLOADING THIEVES!!!
I went to see Trooper (Boys in the Bright White Sports Car, Raise a little Hell, 3 dressed up as a Nine…) a couple weeks ago. I don’t know how big a deal this band was in the States, but in Canada it was at the top of the charts for about 5 years and had 7 major albums. They are still in very good form. The lead singer is Ra McGuire. Here is his take on how the studios took care of a very successful band.
" Most record company contracts ‘loan’ the artist money to record an album. In exchange for this recoupable loan (and promises of promotion and distribution), the record company takes ownership of the resulting recordings. The artist is promised a royalty - a small percentage of the retail price of the finished ‘product’. BUT … before the artist receives any “artist royalties”, they must first PAY BACK the record company the total cost of the recording (and, usually, the video) - not from the total profit on the sales but from their artist royalty. If you have not paid off your first album debt by the time your second album is released, the difference is simply brought forward and you continue to pay back the accumulated amount."
“Notwithstanding the fact that I wrote and sang the songs, spent months in the studio recording the albums and months on the road promoting them - Universal owns all seven records and can do whatever they want with them. This can include, sadly, making them disappear off the face of the earth forever.”
and finally:
“The royalties I receive have gone from pitiful to laughable and I haven’t had a new record hanging in the balance for many years.”
So much for looking out for the poor starving artists.
Maybe the reason so many people are downloading movies is because they don’t want to pay for the trash that passes as music and movies these days? If it’s worth my money I’ll pay for it (I’m also the kind of person who likes having hard copies, so I’d rather buy a CD than mp3s). A lot of what’s out there isn’t worth my money.
The music industry had an extremely profitable decade as people re-bought their music collections on CD instead of vinyl. The industry thought the party would never end and it was much cheaper to re-release old songs, than produce new acts. Now they are addicted to selling the old music over and over, rather than innovating.
Like I said (or insinuated) earlier, the music industry (and the movie industry) will have to re-invent themselves in our new world order to stay around at all, draconian laws to attempt to protect their $$$ notwithstanding.
(Gee, wonder why Canada is the piracy capital of the world? 
)
The problem with the industry reinventing itself is that this requires the industry to admit that they’re broken and that their business model is becoming obsolete in the face of new technologies they are too big and lumbering to adapt to with any acceptable speed. This is an admission they do not want want to admit because it would mean they are no longer in control, and furthermore, that they must come up with a new and uncertain business model that with absolute certainty will not make them the kind of money they make now at the start. Their intractable adherence to the existing model and righteous insistence on laws being updated to serve them, then, is just the desperate windmilling of an entity that is rapidly losing its balance on the precipice of the new digital era. It would be pitiful if it wasn’t so maddening in its quest to relieve their own customers of any remaining rights.
Agreed. I think it’s also a series of tactics that in the long run will alienate the majority of their customer base - to their detriment. It is my opinion that the tactics they’re using are lending the appearance of legitimacy to the pirates.
I suspect a less confrontational attitude would get them better long-term results. Just as an example, what does going after a nominally responsible adult for a teen’s lark downloading of four movies to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars do for them, besides confirming in the public eye that they’re simply bullies?
I won’t get into any of the new blue ray or HD DVD players until I know there is a way to make back-up copies. I don’t care if the way is “sanctioned” or not, as long it is robust. China is producing its own computer chips and soon there may be a lot of new choices that are not crippled with DRM.
More Molly Parker… I love this idea.
It’s more like “more Anne of Green Gables,” or whatever bleak, depressing, high concept piece of crap CBC has churned out recently.
Mindfield, I think you’ve summed the whole issue up very well.
Our own stories, not just the ones the CBC might choose for us to see. I’m quite prepared to write some of them.
We need to liberate all the wonderful and crazy anuimations that I saw at Sheridan College, and which are property of the school and never get on the airwaves. We need Ontario stories and Saskatchewan stories and Quebec stories and Alberta stories and Maritime stories and Northern stories and BC stories. We need stories from the cities and from the country and from the bush.
We need Canadian filmmakers and Canadian screenwriters telling Canadian stories in Canadian theatres.
An amplification, because the edit wiondow timed out…
We need to liberate all the wonderful and crazy anuimations that I saw at Sheridan College, and which are property of the school and never get on the airwaves. We need Ontario stories and Saskatchewan stories and Quebec stories and Alberta stories and Maritime stories and Northern stories and BC stories. We need stories from the cities and from the country and from the bush.
We need stories about what it’s like to be Bush’s other lapdog as well as about how the lefties have misled us. We need political screeds and revolutionary maifestos and calls to action and corporate denunciations. We need poetry and art and literature. We need howls of defiance and cries of ecstasy.
In short, we need Canadian filmmakers and Canadian screenwriters telling Canadian stories in Canadian theatres. And when we do that, we will find that we, too, have a voice in the world.
If you have seen Twitch City’s “Planet of the Cats” you will see that there is hope for Canadian cinema and television.
“Let’s get these green-eyed sons of bitches!”