OVERLY-CYNICAL RANT ALERT! READ AT YOUR OWN PERIL!
“Blame Piracy” is the new mode du jour amongst corporations. No less for the RIAA and MPAA (Record/Movie Industry). Unfortunately, it would appear that their own minions are starting to believe the propaganda as well, as evidenced by this beauty at my local theatre:
Anyone who knows anything about the underground will realise that “filming in theatres” almost always necessitates the aid of a theatre employee (to get the sound feed). Even so, the activity itself is pretty rare in North America; occuring ususally in disadvantaged nations.
Why is that sign there? Because the manager (or his higher ups) believe the RIAA/MPAA lies that Canadian pirates go to theatres with a movie camera, film, leave, and spread their finds on the Internet. It simply isn’t so.
Furthermore, I do believe it is legal to tape movies in Canadian theatres. After all; the Americans whom we usually follow in this instance only explicitly passed a law banning such activity 2 months ago with the passing of the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005. There were prosecutions before then using the DMCA; but it remains unclear if the act of filming (without distributing) was itself illegal.
Either way; we don’t even have the DMCA in Canada. You may believe that I’m writing this as to say “praise our lack of Intellectual Property enforcement!”. This is an incorrect assumption. I’m for IP protections (where valid), but I’m against screwing up our rights in the process.
Making filming in a threatre an offense worse than killing another human being (via manslaughter, sentences according to the FEC Act) is definitively what I consider a screw up of priorities and rights.