Digital Copyright Canada is first out to note that Access Copyright has pulled the plug on Captain Copyright. The Captain generated enormous criticism earlier this year when the lessons, which targeted children as young as Grade One, came to light. Access Copyright suggests that it is too difficult in the […]
Archive for February 5th, 2007
Canadian Heritage Opens Up
Readers will recall that last year I posted information about a Canadian Heritage sponsored study on copyright collectives. While that study has still not been released, the Copyright Policy branch recently opened up by disclosing the external studies it is supporting. The list includes the aforementioned collectives study as well […]
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.
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 […]