ShareThisBy GAYLE MACDONALD and ALEX DOBROTA
Toronto Globe and Mail
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Canadian politicians say that changes are imminent to crack down on illegal camcording in Canadian movie theaters, after a major film studio decided to cancel all its preview screenings in Canada, starting with "Ocean's Thirteen" and the next Harry Potter film in July.
Warner Bros. Pictures Canada said it was forced to make the move after watching film piracy of its top movie titles escalate in the past few years. Dan Fellman, president of domestic distribution, said Tuesday that illegal camcording across Canada increased 24 percent in 2006 over the previous year.
"There is no indication that this isn't going to continue to grow in 2007," he said. "This country has become a video-piracy hub."
Heritage Canada Minister Bev Oda said in a statement that she and Justice Minister Rob Nicholson are working on ways to deal with the problem.
"We are committed to protect the work of creators and take this issue seriously," the statement said.
Oda did not give details and would not answer questions on the subject.
Two parliamentary committees have recently studied the piracy issue and are set to issue reports over the coming weeks that will urge the government to crack down on pirates operating brazenly in theaters across the country. The content of the reports is confidential so far, but MPs on both committees have spoken in favor of enshrining the offense in the Criminal Code.
"There's the notion that it's a victimless crime," said Liberal MP Roy Cullen, who sits on the House public safety committee, which has studied the issue and is set to issue a report. Cullen said he is also in favor of amending the Criminal Code to include movie piracy.
Canada _ particularly Montreal _ is known as one of the world's worst offenders for piracy, rivalling places such as China, Lebanon and the Philippines. A Motion Picture Association analysis of counterfeit discs in 2005 revealed that close to 75 percent of all films illegally camcorded in Canada were recorded in theaters in and around Montreal, recently identified as the No. 1 city in the world for surreptitious camcording.
Cineplex Entertainment _ in conjunction with the Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and other movie chains such as Empire and AMC _ have spent the past few years lobbying the federal government to make it a criminal offense to pirate films.
Tuesday, one industry veteran described the Warner Brothers' preview blackout as a shot-over-the-bow designed to shake up federal officials. The piracy issue heated up in January after the Toronto Globe and Mail published an article detailing how Fox's Hollywood-based president of domestic distribution had sent a blistering letter to Ellis Jacob, the Toronto-based chief executive of Cineplex Entertainment, Canada's biggest cinema chain.
Spitting mad after pinpointing Canadian theaters as the source of a steady stream of illegal camcording, Fox threatened to stop sending copies of all its films to Cineplex's 130 movie houses, or push back the Canadian release date.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
