CanWest News Service, via the Ottawa Citizen and the Montreal Gazette, etc., has caught up to that two-week-old story about 20th Century Fox threatening to withhold its movies from Canadian theatres due to the rampant piracy in Montreal:
As much as 50 per cent of the world’s pirated movies come from Canada, prompting the film industry to threaten to delay the release of new titles in this country.
According to an investigation by Twentieth Century Fox, most of the illegal recording, or “camcording,” is taking place in Montreal movie houses, taking advantage of bilingual releases and lax copyright laws.
“In Quebec, it is much more advantageous because you get both English and French. You cover a bigger part of the world,” said Ellis Jacob, chief executive of the Cineplex Entertainment theatre chain. “They are using Canada because they can have the movie out on the street in the Philippines and China before it even releases there.” . . .
Because of movie piracy, a U.S. congressional committee has added Canada to a “country watch list” that includes such well-known piracy havens as China, Russia, India and Malaysia.
According to the 2006 watch list, “piracy in these countries is largely the result of a lack of political will to confront the problem.”
The article ends by stating that studios can trace pirated movies to specific theatres “by examining them for watermarks that are contained within the images, but invisible to the naked eye.” But I’m pretty sure that my naked eyes have seen them.
UPDATE: The Hollywood Reporter has the story now, too.
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