The federal government has taken the first step in combating movie piracy in Canada and served notice of a proposed bill to visiting California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper informed Schwarzenegger of the proposed legislation during a brief meeting on Wednesday afternoon in Ottawa.
The governor, who received a star's welcome on Parliament Hill, is currently on a three-day trade mission to Canada.
Government sources told the Canadian Press that the Tories plan to introduce legislation that would help police charge those who use camcorders in theatres to record movies that are later distributed on the Internet.
"This is a huge issue and one of the big irritants between California and the government of Canada," CTV's deputy Ottawa bureau chief Rosemary Thompson said Wednesday.
According to the American movie industry, Canadian bootleggers are costing the industry US$6 billion in lost revenue a year.
The act of recording a movie that is screened inside a theatre is not currently a criminal offence in Canada.
However, the maximum fine under the federal Copyright Act is $1 million and five years in jail if the recorded movie is then used for commercial distribution.
Theatre owners have been lobbying Ottawa to bring in tougher laws to combat the practice.
Sources told CP that the new legislation would involve amendments to the Criminal Code -- but didn't explain what new tools it would give police and the justice system to crack down on piracy.
Earlier this month, Warner Brothers announced it would cancel all preview screenings of its summer blockbusters in Canada like "Harry Potter and the Order of The Phoenix" and "Ocean's 13."
If the bill passes next fall, cheap and readily available copies of popular current releases will presumably be less frequent in Canada and on the worldwide market.
Experts can now accurately determine which theatre pirated films were recorded in, and analysts say up to a quarter of illegally copied films originate from Canada.
"In the last three years we've created the technology that puts a watermark on every movie print that's sent out of Hollywood," Douglas Frith, of the Canadian Motion Pictures Distributors Association, told CTV's Mike Duffy Live.
"So when you find a pirated version anywhere on the Internet, from that watermark we can determine where it was camcorded. And for 20 to 25 per cent of the cases worldwide in 2005, it was camcorded in Canada. That number, compared to the size of our population, is astronomical."
While the American movie studios are angered over Canadian piracy, the movie industry on this side of the border is suffering as well.
"There are lots of great Canadian films that are made too and you don't want them necessarily sent off through the Internet," Thompson said.
The Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association says movie pirating in Canada accounted for 20 per cent of camcorded copies of DVDs worldwide.
In 2005, movie piracy cost the Canadian film industry US$225 million and the Canadian government US$34 million, according to a Motion Picture Association of America study.
With a report from the Canadian Press
