Post Tagged with: "mpaa"

Justice Minister Rejects Call for Camcording Law

The National Post reports that Justice Minister Rob Nicholson has no plans to prioritize a new camcording law, despite the intense lobbying of recent weeks.  Nicholson noted "that there is already a stiff copyright law in Canada to catch people who sneak camcorders into movie theatres for the purposes of […]

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February 13, 2007 14 comments News

Movie Piracy Claims More Fiction Than Fact

My weekly Law Bytes column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) examines recent claims that Canada has become the world's leading source of movie piracy. The column finds that a closer examination of the industry's own data reveals that the claims are based primarily on fiction rather than fact, featuring unsubstantiated and inconsistent claims about camcording, exaggerations about its economic harm, and misleading critiques of Canadian law.

First, the camcorder claims have themselves involved wildly different figures.  Over the past two weeks, reports have pegged the Canadian percentage of global camcording at either forty or fifty percent.  Yet the International Intellectual Property Alliance, a U.S. lobby group that includes the MPAA, advised the U.S. government in late September that Canadians were the source for 23 percent of camcorded copies of DVDs.  

Not surprisingly, none of these figures have been subject to independent audit or review.  In fact, AT&T Labs, which conducted the last major public study on movie piracy in 2003, concluded that 77 percent of pirated movies actually originate from industry insiders and advance screener copies provided to movie reviewers.

Moreover, the industry's numbers indicate that camcorded versions of DVDs strike only a fraction of the movies that are released each year.  As of August 2006, the MPAA documented 179 camcorded movies as the source for infringing DVDs since 2004.  During that time, its members released approximately 1400 movies, suggesting that approximately one in every ten movies is camcorded and sold as infringing DVDs.  According to this data, Canadian sources are therefore responsible for camcorded DVD versions of about three percent of all MPAA member movies.

Second, the claims of economic harm associated with camcorded movies have been grossly exaggerated.

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February 5, 2007 14 comments Columns

Movie Piracy Claims More Fiction Than Fact

Appeared in the Toronto Star on February 5, 2007 as U.S. Movie Piracy Claims Mostly Fiction In recent weeks, Canadians have been subjected to a steady stream of reports asserting that Canada has become the world's leading source of movie piracy.  Pointing to the prevalence of illegal camcording – a […]

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February 5, 2007 23 comments Columns Archive

Debating DRM

Paid Content has a pair of interesting reports from the MidemNet conference in France including coverage of a DRM debate between representatives from the CEA, RIAA, and MPAA (the CEA response to RIAA's claim that it makes the recording industry look evil – "I don’t make you look evil – […]

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January 21, 2007 1 comment News

Inside Jobs

Rob Hyndman points to today's embarrassing Globe and Mail article on movie piracy ("Pirates of the Canadians"), noting that the article smacks of a planted public relations piece.  I certainly agree that the article continues a build-up toward new copyright legislation.  I have two further points.  First, I'd have no […]

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January 13, 2007 16 comments News