The NY Times reports on the Canadian camcording issue, using the figure of "30 – 40 percent" of pirated DVDs sourced to Canada. Moreover, there now yet another reason for why the Canadian camcording is a particular problem – "industry officials acknowledge that Canadian pirates offer technically superior work."

Fair Dealing by Giulia Forsythe (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/dRkXwP
Copyright
The Recording Industry’s Digital Strategy Out of Tune
My weekly Law Bytes column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) begins with the following:
Ten years ago, as the Internet began to mushroom in popularity and emerging technologies enabled consumers to make near-perfect copies of digital content, the recording industry emphasized a two-pronged strategy in response to the changing business environment. First, it focused on copy-control technologies, often referred to as digital rights management (DRM), that many in the industry believed would allow it re-assert control over music copying. Second, it lobbied the Canadian government for a private copying levy to compensate for the music copying that it could not control.
While the industry’s approach proved successful on the legal front – the 1996 World Intellectual Property Organization’s Internet Treaties established legal protections for DRM and Ottawa introduced a private copying levy on blank media such as cassettes and CDs in 1997 – the strategy’s effectiveness has long been subject to debate. The week of February 5th may ultimately be viewed as the beginning of the end of that debate. That week, which began with Apple CEO Steve Jobs calling on the industry to drop DRM and concluded with the Canadian Private Copying Collective (CPCC), the collective that administers the private copying levy, applying for its dramatic expansion, leaves little doubt that the recording industry got it wrong.
The column proceeds to discuss the failure of DRM and the mounting pressure on the industry to drop it.
Recording Industry’s Digital Strategy Out of Tune
Appeared in the Toronto Star on February 19, 2007 as Recording Industry's Off-Key Strategy Ten years ago, as the Internet began to mushroom in popularity and emerging technologies enabled consumers to make near-perfect copies of digital content, the recording industry embarked on a two-pronged strategy in response to the changing […]
Hollywood and DRM
The Wall Street Journal reports that the Hollywood movie studios are internally debating the merits of dropping DRM.
The Effectiveness of Notice and Notice
The CBC runs a story today on the growing use of "notice and notice" by copyright holders. Telus apparently sends out about a thousand notices each week, while the Business Software Alliance says it sent out 60,000 notifications to Canadians last year. These numbers are consistent with my own experience […]


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