But I Thought Counterfeiting Movies Ran Rampant In The Wild West Of Canada?

from the reality-bites dept

Fri, Apr 2nd 2010 4:45pm — Mike Masnick

If you only listened to the entertainment industry spokeslobbyists, you might think that Canada had no copyright/anti-counterfeiting laws at all. Europe is pushing for massive changes to Canadian copyright law via CETA, and the US entertainment industry insists that ACTA is needed to to drag Canada into the 21st century. Clearly, the laws must not exist. Except... Canada already does have copyright/counterfeiting laws in place, and they seem to work pretty well. Anshar points us to the news that existing laws were used to seize over a quarter of a million counterfeit DVDs. So, what, with CETA or ACTA it would have been half a million?

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: canada, copying, dvds, movies

9 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Brian (profile), 2 Apr 2010 @ 4:12pm

More like 1 million
Because for each treaty, ACTA and CETA, you multiply the real number by 2 for each treaty you have. In this case had they signed both they would have found about 1 million counterfeit DVDs :D
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Bill Pickett, 2 Apr 2010 @ 5:07pm

Is this why I can't get major label music?
Often when I go to a YouTube channel for a musician I find out that the label has blocked it in Canada for copyright reasons. Also the new version of my operating system, Ubuntu 10.04, is coming with a music store but in Canada that music store is crippled by not carrying any of the major labels music. Is this what it means to have "301" status or has my country simply not signed enough treaties to enjoy the latest fad out of hollywood? Seriously, I want to buy my music from the Ubuntu One Music Store but in Canada I am being denied the opportunity to legally purchase my music! I guess I won't be incrementally replacing my existing music library just yet. You can bet that someday when I can get my music as MP3s only without any DRM surrounding them from my favorite artists who happen to have signed with major labels then the incremental replacement will begin. Now if hollywood would only serve me as a customer too: there is no theatre in my town, I'd like to see movies released to DVD earlier so that wouldn't suck so much too.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Bill Pickett, 2 Apr 2010 @ 5:10pm
  
  Re: Is this why I can't get major label music?
  Sorry, didn't mention that the Ubuntu One Music Store has as a major feature of offering major label music with as little DRM as possible which means that most tracks are simply MP3s.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 2 Apr 2010 @ 5:24pm

Unrelated: Mike, remember the spat between failbooking.com and failbook.com? The former now appears to have acquired the latter..
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
NAMELESS.ONE, 2 Apr 2010 @ 5:44pm

HEY what about the CRIA themselves
ya know the pirates that have effectivelly been counterfeiting stuff since 1980 as a 6 billion dollar lawsuit alleges?

WHOSE the bigger pirates, some punk kid who never sells it or the people actually selling it like the CRIA criminals who are profiting and keeping htemoney not paying artists.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 3 Apr 2010 @ 12:34am

Crazy Canadians
Course they don't have the same problem, their web sites let you stream tv shows right after showing. Crazy people, you can't make money that way.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 3 Apr 2010 @ 4:38pm

quarter million seems big but how much real piracy occurs?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Flakey, 3 Apr 2010 @ 6:49pm

The hotbed of piracy
Funny that the major copyright holders are coming up with this isn't it?

The thing is you can't believe the lies put out as puff pieces to pad their stance. You know this, I know this, crap we see it all the time in tear downs of supposed figures produced.

Worse it seems when these piracy court cases come up a good portion of the time you start finding out that the copyright owners themselves seeded copyright files just to make sure they were there before they bring the charges. This could be seen in the UTube case where Google made the tie to major label employees doing it. It could again be seen at the start when they first tried to bust the server hosting site of The Pirate Bay that there was a designated "rat" that was feeding copyrighted files to again ensure they were there.

So much of this is the copyright holders themselves setting up a place so they can use that as the excuse to bring them to court. It puts in place the idea that them supplying the files in question, along with the putting out of bad data to support their stance, means that they really don't have that good a case unless they can set up a situation where where they have provided all the evidence.

There is nothing wrong with Canada's laws on copyright other than it doesn't suit the major players holding the copyrights. This is their method to try to get Canada to go along with it since they had no success with getting the US government to bully them into compliance.

Smoke and mirrors mainly, with a little abracadabra for seasoning, looks to be the main evidence to try and push Canada into compliance.

We won't talk of the business of their piracy report that claimed Canada and New York together made up more than 100% of the global piracy.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Pixelation, 4 Apr 2010 @ 12:13am

"So, what, with CETA or ACTA it would have been half a million?"

After the treaties get signed and they seize another quarter of a million counterfeit DVDs, we will hear how important treaties like this are. The industry will tell us how it would have been impossible without these treaties. After that taxes will increase to pay for it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]