Following Warner Bros. decision to cancel advance screenings of its summer blockbusters in Canada, Ottawa has announced it will pass legislation to prevent unauthourized recording of movies at Canadian theatres.
Under the proposed legislation, anyone caught recording a movie in a theatre without the consent of the manager faces a two-year jail sentence. The penalty for recording a movie for the purposes of selling, renting, or other commercial distribution is five years.
"It now provides that ability so that camcording can be stopped when it is happening in theatres," says Canadian Heritage Minister Bev Oda. "The onus of proof that was not under the criminal code but only under copyright law was very difficult to enforce."
Oda says it's estimated that Canada represents about 20 to 25 per cent of piracy camcording worldwide. The new legislation will protect the Canadian film industry as well, which has also been incurring losses due to illegal comcording.
"It's very hard to establish loss [to the Canadian industry] because these movies are being distributed right around the world," says Oda. "There was a pirated copy of a Canadian movie found in Baghdad."
Every film sent to theatres is individually watermarked, making it possible to identify where an illegal copy of the film was made.
The Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association has said that as well as impacting its members financially, movie piracy also has the potential to affect the cultural exports market, theatre owners, film rental businesses and legitimate Canadian distributors.
Canada has been criticized particularly in the U.S. for a lack of more stringent laws to deter movie piracy. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), an organisation led by the major Hollywood studios, has long lobbied the Canadian government for tougher laws.
The MPAA estimates that it lost $3.5 billion in 2006 due to movie piracy-- not a significant amount considering the $25 million in profit earned within the first weekend of the release of just one movie, Saw II. Saw II has so far made $140 million in profit worldwide.
Canada has been on a U.S. "country watch list" for movie piracy since 2006, along with some of the world's worst intellectual property bootleggers such as China, India, Pakistan and Russia.
John Bailey, CEO of Alliance Atlantis Motion Picture Distribution LP, a leading distributor of motion pictures in Canada, said in a press release that the company is "delighted with the Government's announcement to change the Criminal Code to help fight the growing problem of movie theft in Canadian theatres."
But not everyone believes that making piracy a criminal offence will have the desired affect.
Dr. Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, says on his website that there is "little reason to believe" that the new bill will have much of an impact on illegal camcording in Canada. He points out that the U.S. has similar laws, yet it is still the world's leading source of pirated movies.
"We should at least be honest about this bill. It is the result of U.S. pressure, it will have no discernible impact on movie piracy, and it has nothing to do with Canadian films." stated Geist.
A joint 2003 study by AT&T and the University of Pennsylvania indicated that 77 per cent of pirated movies appear to have been leaked by industry insiders. An insider could make an unauthorized copy of a movie in the editing room, make a copy of a critic's advance copy of a movie, or copy a promotional screening copy.
The U.S. Congress introduced legislation in 2005 making camcording without the permission of the copyright owner a felony. In California, camcording carries a penalty of one year in jail and a maximum fine of $2,500. Mexico has recently introduced similar laws, and Japan is expected to enact legislation this year.
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