Don’t Believe the Hype
Warner Bros, announced this week they will stop all pre-screenings of their films this summer. This essentially means that private radio stations across the city won’t be calling “caller number 7 gets to see..”
The real purpose of this announcement is to put the heat on the Canadian Government to change its laws regarding digital piracy.
Dr. Michael Geist is the Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa and has a very interesting blog concerning these issues. His post regarding Warner decision is a very fascinating read.
In it, Dr Geist points out that “Warner Bros. astonishingly now claims that 70 percent of camcorded movies have been traced to Canada over the last 18 months. Given the claims of 20 percent, 23 percent, 30 percent, 40 percent, and 50 percent did not make the requisite impact (in fact, the USTR even rejected the movie industry’s request to escalate Canada on the Special 301 Watch list), we now get a blockbuster number of 70 percent. Of course, just yesterday the head of the Canadian Motion Pictures Distributors Association told the Industry Committee that the number was between 20 - 25 percent. Moreover, with New York City taking 40 percent of the camcording claims and with Spiderman 3 apparently appearing on China streets weeks before the previews in Canada, the numbers just don’t add up.”
The media, for the most part has published stories that really, have not gone into depth on this issue.. merely reporting that Warner is stopping pre-screenings because of concerns that Canada is a pirate heaven and that Montreal is the nerve center of this piracy. The real purpose of this maneuverer is to simply to attract the Government’s attention and to plant in Canadian’s minds that we are a piracy heaven.
We aren’t, and I’m not buying Warner’s or any other studio’s numbers.
Related posts:
Montreal was implicated as the worst for camera snooping. With only two English language movie theatres that strikes me as odd. Besides, most movies are available in much better quality on so-called DVD-screeners that gets posted on the Internets. These are often send to the press, crew and Oscar voters, and contain the whole movie without the extras usually found on DVDs. There are also versions available that are copied directly from the film print, probably somewhere where there was access to that print so in projection cabins or in the distribution chain.
Here’s an article that discusses that.