The Governator and Canada's "Anti-Camcording" Bill

Pleas from the studios didn't work. Neither did pulling press, promotional and word-of-mouth screenings, or letters from Senators Diane Feinstein (D-Calif) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) sent directly to the prime minister. Putting Canada on a U.S. government watch list three years ago also had little effect. What it took was a visit from California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to get the Canadian government to finally introduce some "anti-camcording legislation" to help curtail what many see as rampant movie piracy from our neighbor to the north.

Schwarzenegger was recently on a three-day trade mission to Canada and ended his visit Thursday with assurances from the ministers of Heritage, Justice and Industry that a bill to address the piracy problem will be introduced to the House of Commons.

"Canada's new government will take action to put a stop to the problem of film piracy and will bring forward amendments to Canada's Criminal Code," Heritage Minister Bev Oda said. "Piracy has a devastating impact on the entire film industry, and our government intends to ensure respect for the intellectual property rights of cinematic works."

Prime Minister Stephen Harper informed Schwarzenegger of the proposed legislation during a brief meeting on Wednesday in Ottawa. Currently, the act of recording a film in a movie theater isn't a criminal offense in Canada. However, if the recorded movie is then distributed, the maximum fine under the federal Copyright Act is $1 million and five years in jail, but this is often time-consuming and costly to prove. According to the Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association, movie pirating in Canada accounts for 20 percent of camcorded copies of DVDs worldwide. Last month, Warner Bros. claimed that more than 70 percent of its pirated titles come from Canada.

Governator brings piracy battle north [Variety]
Ottawa drafts bill to ban movie piracy in Canada [CTV.ca]