The Canadian government will introduce anti-camcording legislation today. Here's how it happened.
Downloadable version here.
The Power of Lobbying: How Hollywood Got a Canadian Movie Piracy Bill in Under Six Months
Tags: bernier / camcording / cmpda / copyrightCopyright Microsite - Copyright VideoCopyright Microsite - Canadian CopyrightMovie Camcording / film / movie piracy / mpaa / oda
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I feel inclined to ask why anti-camcording law is a bad thing. If this has not been illegal for the past hundred years, I ask why hasn’t it. What good can come from camcording a movie from inside a theatre?
I’m sure that the response could be that this is a slippery slope which could result in Canada’s government being controlled by lobbyists like the MPAA; however, I see no harm coming from this bill to the everyday moviegoer. These are the types of laws that should be passed because they go after the source of piracy instead of the people who passively pirate content. I believe that both the pirates and the downloaders are morally wrong in what they do but in order to stop one, you need to go after the other. Rather than suing families and ignorant parents, the MPAA is going after the real pirates.
But, the “slippery slope” arguement is EXACTLY what is wrong with laws like this … ignoring the fact that our government is wasting it’s time catering to a foreign cartel rather than focusing on … I don’t know … safe drinking water for the thousands of Canadians who don’t have it.
Once this law is in place, it’s enshrined in the criminal code that copyright violation == capital crime not civil matter. Now they can pressure the police & courts to spend more of their money chasing this down (rather than having to spend their own money prosecuting it). Now they can build on this with the next law that says “downloading is the same as camcording, and therefore it’s should be a criminal matter as well. U owe us that! Oh, and buy the way, that surcharge on recordable media … yeah, we’re keeping that too”.
It’s a complete waste of my tax dollars since it won’t curtail movie piracy by one tenth of one percent. I can only hope that the minority government finds itself with more important things to bleat about before this ever gets past committee.
The question, Michael, is what the hell can we do about it? I had always thought that our minority government wouldn’t bother passing unimportant and frankly anti-consumer legislation like this, but I guess what Arnie wants…
Again: a plague on both the pirates and the industry lobby groups for going at each other over — and through — the rest of us in the general population.
Camcorders
“I’m sure that the response could be that this is a slippery slope which could result in Canada’s government being controlled by lobbyists like the MPAA; however, I see no harm coming from this bill to the everyday moviegoer. These are the types of laws that should be passed because they go after the source of piracy instead of the people who passively pirate content. I believe that both the pirates and the downloaders are morally wrong in what they do but in order to stop one, you need to go after the other. Rather than suing families and ignorant parents, the MPAA is going after the real pirates.”
Alex, do you really think that people download camcorded movies when people worldwide leak out quality screeners? Even moreso, since camcording can **already** be prosecuted under existing law AND movie theatres can kick anyone out– like camcorders. Will we soon see police in movie theatres since the theatres apparently don’t pay their employees enough to have them care about kicking people out? Perhaps theatres should raise wages instead of having the MPAA lobby government.
That’s what the impetus for this new law seems to be.
Adding laws for the sake of it doesn’t accomplish anything, period, and is not in the interest if the people who elected them. It scares me what we’ll see in terms of anti-circumvention legislation in the future, and why I will vote NDP or Liberal to get the C’s out or to keep a minority government.
Addendum
wanted to add that two years for bringing a camera in is crazy. Law ‘for the people’ in MPAA language, heh.
Why can’t musicians who perform at concerts get bootleggers arrested now, even though they can confiscate recorders or boot you out? Everyone should get their pet law passed via their pet government. That’s what it seems like.
I want a law to put people in jail if they copy a picture or a snippet of javascript from my blog.
Same for people who repeat my jokes.
If you cut and paste this comment you’re going to jail too.
Chief Navel Gazer
It seems that what is fair use to one group is theft to another. .
I tend agree with the slippery slope arguments. While there does not seem to be anyone who seriously defends the right of someone to camcord a movie, could this type of law not easily be extended to make it illegal to copy, take pictures or camcord other things too? One might see sinister underlying motives in the motion picture industry moves here. If copying a movie I have paid to see for personal non-commercial, personal use is illegal, can extending the law to ripping a CD or DVD that I own be far behind?
Can IP laws move into non-traditional roles? Travellers will often run into “no photography” and “no camcording” signs in historical buildings. There are many good (and many not so good) reasons for these policies. While visiting a very famous state-owned European castle, I was told by the guide that I could not camcord or photograph the interior, because it was copyrighted. Floors, ceilings, walls and furnishings that are well over 100 years old are now have now turned into IP.
A balanced revision of IP laws is certainly long overdue. A patchwork approach, like the proposed law, may satisfy a certain stakeholder community. However, it is not good public policy. A well thought out policy that balances the rights of IP creators, owners and users would clarify issues and would provide for more certainty for all of these stakeholders. That would require real leadership, which is what is missing in this entire issue.
video store owner
To all who think that DVD piracy is not serious, just talk to any video rental store owner. We are suffering, because of the illegal competition here in Toronto.
Mr. Geist, please rethink your stand on this. DVD piraters who sell in Pacific Mall and Orient Center should be dealt with the same way as drug pushers.
…
[\”What good can come from camcording a movie from inside a theatre? \”]
Here\’s a better question: what good can come of a law that addresses a non-existent problem?
\”video store owner\”, you can\’t be serious. If you haven\’t found a way to deal with it, that is your own problem. This is and should remain civil matter, not a criminal one. When did it become the government\’s job to do your work for you?
While I may empathize with video store owner, I look at how I spend my own family’s entertainment budget (which has gone up as a percentage of disposable income over time). At one time much of my entertainment budget went to video rentals, with the occasional trip to the movie theater.
Now, with a large screen TV and a DVR, the family time shifts a lot more TV programs than they ever did with a VCR. My wife and daughter could never figure out the VCR, but the intuitive DVR interface made recording HD TV programs a snap. PS2’s Nintendo DS’s, and even the old reliable PC have part of the entertainment budget that goes to games. With an MP3 player, I am now buying CDs again and doing legal downloads (I subscribe to e Music) – there goes another chunk of the entertainment budget. Now that the kids are older (and we don’t have to go through the hassle of finding a sitter), we are getting out to live theater and concerts more often.
As for videos – there has been a shift there too. We still rent occasionally. When we look at the cost of a DVD at places like Walmart and Costco, we often decide to buy, rather than rent. The retail cost of a video and rental price of a recent release video are now close enough that we will buy at a discounter if we think we will watch the video more than once. Even when we rent, we will often pick up one of the used DVDs that the store is getting rid of.
There you have it. Not piracy, but two simple reasons. We spread our entertainment budget over a much broader base of entertainment options and the cost of a new release video rental simply does not provide the value it once did. While I have no doubt that pirated videos do play a part in the overall decline in the video rental business,
(continued)
I suspect that it is an over simplification to throw all of the blame at pirates. Ongoing technological changes will continue to create challenges for the entertainment industry. It is far easier to blame pirates, rather than admitting that the “old” business models are no longer competitive. Does anyone feel sorry for Kodak or some of the old film based camera manufacturers have faded away? I guess they made the mistake of mistake of not whining to politicians about how their products were no longer relevant, but should be protected anyways.
http://www.blork.org/blorkblog/
I’m not against making camcording illegal, but I am against having my bag searched and my (still) camera confiscated when I want to go to the cinema to see a movie. That happened to me last Friday, and I asked for my money back rather than letting some security lug take my camera and toss it into a box with a bunch of other ones (with no access control).
Remember–it was a camera for still images that I carry all the time. Sure, it can record brief video clips, but nothing you could use for bootlegging.
So yeah, bust people if you catch them, but don\’t treat your law-abiding customers (which are the vast, vast majority) like suspected criminals.
(I wrote about my camera experience here, on my blog:
[ link ])
just replying to Brent’s comments…
How can theft be considered as a civil matter. If you wrote an article, then some website placed it as their own story, isn’t that theft?
If you do not consider this theft, can you point me to theother stuff you may have… I’d like to borrow it;)
And
norbertcruz, it\\\’s theft as far as claiming it as their own but most places don\\\’t do that, they simply copy it and post it themselves. this is essential what the record and movie industry\\\’s anti-piracy propaganda is about. copying a disk is not theft in itself. it never will be. no more theft than one company buying out another to reduce the competition.
the US seems to be trying to force their laws and ways onto the rest of the world… and why are we following? not so much that we understand and agree with what the US says but we have no way to protect ourselves when the damned Americans start using threats, legal or by force.
Oh
apologies for all the \\\ in the last post, i blame the pirates (and the site’s crappy image capture security).
Not theft…
[How can theft be considered as a civil matter.
Because it’s not theft in the first place. It’s, at most, copyright infringement. That’s why “theft” and “copyright infringement” are defined as completely different things in law. When technology outpaces copyright, copyright needs to change. It would be wrong to suppress technological and human progress to keep some lazy-crap business afloat that stubbornly refuses to evolve like an eight-year-old stubbornly refusing to eat his food.
[If you wrote an article, then some website placed it as their own story, isn’t that theft?]
No, it would be copyright infringement, which is not theft.
[If you do not consider this theft, can you point me to theother stuff you may have… I’d like to borrow it;)]
It never ceases to amaze me how few people can actually grasp the simple concept that ideas DO NOT EQUAL physical objects. It’s elementary-school logic and mathematics.
If you steal my car, I am completely deprived of it. If you “steal” my artwork or writing, the only thing I am “deprived” of is some imaginary and concocted value associated with it.
The point of copyright is to encourage technical and artistic progress via monetary incentive. Treating your customers like *all* of them are crooks just to nab the vast minority of those customers that you don’t like does nothing to achieve this goal — in fact, it hinders any progress.
When what is currently defined as copyright infringement becomes so commonplace that enforcement is impossible or violating of rights and freedoms, copyright needs to change and your business needs to change with it. Otherwise, be prepared to start writing chapter eleven. If you can’t stay afloat, too bad.
Horse-drawn buggies are a niche business these days as the technology that replaced them is so much better.
It’s a foot in the door…..SHOOT the foot