MPAA Pushes Lawmakers to Criminalize Movie Camming
Written by Ernesto on September 05, 2007The MPAA is currently on a world tour trying to convince politicians to introduce legislation that criminalizes the recording of movies in cinemas. The MPAA already succeeded in Canada, Japan and Italy, and their next stop is the UK.
Their goal is to make movie camming a criminal instead of a civil offense to clear the way for more severe punishments. New laws often allow punishments up to several years jail time and exorbitant fines.
This week MPAA chairman Dan Glickman is visiting the UK to talk to UK film minister Margaret Hodge, advisors to the UK prime minister Gordon Brown, and representatives from the UK Film Council. Glickman will probably sum up the familiar made-up statistics we read in every MPAA press release to convince the lawmakers that pirates are in fact terrorists.
Crazy or not, unfortunately it seems like their approach is working. Theater owners slowly start to alienate their customers and go as fas as using metal detectors and night-vision goggles to track down movie cammers. Everyone could be a pirate these days and theater employees are trained and rewarded up to $500 for catching pirates.
As a result, a Virgina teenager was busted for recording a few seconds of the movie “Transformers” on her cell-phone. The only thing she wanted to do was show it to her 13 year old brother, however, under a new Zero-Tolerance Policy, police responded to the call from Regal Cinemas who promptly arrested Sejas.
On a sidenote, Hollywood just had its best summer ever. In a response to this great news MPAA chairman Dan Glickman said “As Shakespeare said, ‘The play is the thing.’ As long as we offer good quality stories that people like and a comfortable place to see them, people will go to the movies.” A comfortable place? Right.
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20 Responses
Well, I guess this is a good thing. But don’t get me wrong, I also very much dislike the MPAA, however, this will lessen terrible quality movie cams on torrent sites anyway.
Personally, I will go to the theatre, rather than have to wait for a week or so to finish a download.
Furthermore, camming will not even scratch the surface of next years income of from the box office. 4 billion this year, it will go even higher next year.
Yet, MPAA will continue to whine that they are losing money from piracy and the camming. I hope the executives enjoy their 4 billion dollar income.
PS: If they want to actually get more people to come to the theatres, make good films that people would want to watch. Not the Michael Bay crap.
And it wouldn’t hurt to improve and enforce manners in the theatres because non of use would want some fucking little kids screaming and talking while watching the film.
coldfusion you obviously dont understand that the harder it is to get the cam, the worse the quality will become.
what movie torrents take you a week to download? on a public tracker you should finish a movie in half a day and if you have dial up then you should give up on P2P.
if all else fails get a membership to a private tracker and finish a download in a hour
funFact: the movie industry looses roughly 1% of earnings due to piracy.
*they tipically make about 30% income*
[quote comment="159349"]coldfusion you obviously dont understand that the harder it is to get the cam, the worse the quality will become.
what movie torrents take you a week to download? on a public tracker you should finish a movie in half a day and if you have dial up then you should give up on P2P.
if all else fails get a membership to a private tracker and finish a download in a hour[/quote]
Meh, CAM should be scraped if you want to watch the movie the day it comes out pay the cash to go see it.
If this stops the scene from releasing CAM’s its a good thing imo. Let the MPAA have this win and be slated for a day or two.
Let’s see how they do in Sweden.
I only have one thing to say: @#*$ them!
@JohnD: Hmmm, way to contribute to the discussion. This article is about getting down on cammers not about hunting P2P networks or owners of torrent sites/trackers. I actually partially support the actions of the MPAA on THIS camming thing.
Partially meaning that it will deter some costumers from going to the theatres.
@Roofy: Yes, I do understand that the harder it is to cam, the crappier the quality. However, from my experience of obtaining cams from sites (Only have and deleted 2 cammed films) are, in general, bad quality.
And as for the lengthy period, I don’t always leave my PC on 24/7, that I why I said it took a week. My bad on not being more specific on that.
Meh, Its not like cam quality movies are that great anyways.
[quote comment="159366"]
Meh, CAM should be scraped if you want to watch the movie the day it comes out pay the cash to go see it.
If this stops the scene from releasing CAM’s its a good thing imo. Let the MPAA have this win and be slated for a day or two.[/quote]
rofl
you have a spelling error: its scra-p-ped and not scraped
oh and :p cams are the first step in the evolution of a movie ^^
the few early birds go to the cinema in the first week of the premiere
and help silver pie-rats and scener supply chains to be the first to have a movie =^____^=
and yes it can be a hefty sum that some are prepared to pay to be the first to sell or trade a first pie-rat version that just appeared in local theatres =^.^=)
but well…
time will learn if the hassling of the mpaa will result in a new scenewar at the movie sections just like in the games section (vitality and hatred (properwars…)
tough i doubt that all countries will support the laws that are made by an organisation that has a bad reputation if it comes to freedom of speech.
“tough i doubt that all countries will support the laws that are made by an organisation that has a bad reputation if it comes to freedom of speech.”
Agreed on that part.
Speaking of games, although somewhat deviating from the topic, a lot of flaming has been thrown at 2K games about the whole Bioshock limited install problems. I personally think that many game companies will follow similarly to what 2K did to prevent piracy. However, this will simply add fuel to the fire on game piracy, it will simply piss off people who bought these games at 50 to 70 dollars and yet they have to go through complex and lengthy activation processes, thus, forcing the same people to simply download the same game for the luxury of having multiple installs.
Personally, this would take a few legs off on PC gaming, which I do some casual gaming and would hate it to go away. I’ll miss the simply put the cd key in pop cd in to play game method.
[quote]rofl
you have a spelling error: its scra-p-ped and not scraped
oh and :p cams are the first step in the evolution of a movie ^^
the few early birds go to the cinema in the first week of the premiere
and help silver pie-rats and scener supply chains to be the first to have a movie =^____^=
and yes it can be a hefty sum that some are prepared to pay to be the first to sell or trade a first pie-rat version that just appeared in local theatres =^.^=)
but well…
time will learn if the hassling of the mpaa will result in a new scenewar at the movie sections
just like in the games section (vitality and hatred (properwars…)
tough i doubt that all countries will support the laws that are made by an organisation that has a bad reputation if it comes to freedom of speech.[/quote]
I don’t really care if its the “first step in evolution of movies”. Its crap quality and shouldn’t be worthy of racing for in the first place.
FUCK MPAA
^^^^ This is what I am talking about. >_>
Maybe use some brain power to post something with any content regarding the discussion.
For my time reading TF, these types of comments just degrades of what other people with brains are discussing about.
“Its crap quality and shouldn’t be worthy of racing for in the first place.”
Agreed as well. It is really not worth going to the theatres at midnight to simply cam it. As what Roofy said, it is difficult to cam thus having crappy quality.
O[quote comment="159350"]funFact: the movie industry looses roughly 1% of earnings due to piracy.
*they tipically make about 30% income*[/quote]
Are you joking? Most movies they make take about 1 million to make, and earn about 30 million dollars AT THE LEAST! They are not making 30% income, and anyone who says that is a liar.
lol man steps into my country and gets seen man gets assasinated – BLaM!
Now thats a real criminal offence haha
I see a stragety in this and it is a self-conscience tactic.
to be perfectly honest, in the UK most people that cam could probably find ways around it, for example, i COULD get a reasonable quality cam onto my digital camera, which if i was asked about, i could easily explain away as being used to take photos of me and my friends during my trip to the town center, or go when there mates are working there, so that they can be mistakenly under searched etc…
although i Don’t particularly agree with cammed movies anyway, i never touch them, Ive seen a couple of screener for films that have been released in the UK way after everywhere else, but thats about it,
and anyway, if they ban it, it’ll just make the scene go to another country, or rely more on R5 type releases, so they wont win in the long run
Im sure “Cams” will be round for long time.
“Are you joking? Most movies they make take about 1 million to make, and earn about 30 million dollars AT THE LEAST! They are not making 30% income, and anyone who says that is a liar.”
Yeah – you are a total idiot. First of all, try an average budget of $30 million for studio pictures – and that’s before the advertising and marketing budget — to break even, most have to earn at least $100 million — and that’s for cheaper films that are put out. I hate the MPAA, but the movie industry isn’t as profitable as you think. It’s the 10% of bonafide hits that end up making up for the other 90% that end up flopping or losing money.
time and time again the americans are imposing their retarded laws in other countries. Its like making another country throw a guy in prison because the crime he committed was illegal in america but not in that guy’s country
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