Part of the reason camming occurs, however, is down to the exclusivity enjoyed by the world’s theater chains, meaning that while a mainstream movie is being shown in a cinema, it is not available anywhere else. It will not be available on Netflix nor will it be available for purchase on Blu-ray or DVD. This creates a convenient opening for the black market.

Of course, pretty much the whole time a movie is showing in theaters it will be available both online and on DVD, because someone, somewhere, will have recorded it illegally. True exclusivity only exists in the minds of the theaters and distributors.

Just lately it’s been extremely popular for Australians to be criticized for their piracy habits, an activity sometimes justified by films not being made available quickly enough Down Under. This morning it’s been revealed that the group representing the Australian film and TV home entertainment industry intend to do something about that.

Speaking with Fairfax Media, Australian Home Entertainment Distributors Association chief executive officer Simon Bush said that the current theatrical window will be narrowed in an effort to reduce piracy.

“This 120 days is not the hard and fast rule anymore and there will be some studios this year that will be coming in around the 90 days,” Bush said. “[The studios] don’t like the fact that they are losing out a lot of money to piracy.”

It’s hoped that the shortening of the delay will go someway towards reducing illegal movie downloads in Australia by providing content in alternative formats in a more timely fashion. That being said, AHEDA still wish to preserve the big screen’s exclusivity in the market and its position as the premier location for early viewing.

“It continues to ensure that the theatrical window retains its rightful prominence in the market as the premium movie experience, but also allows the consumer to increasingly access the film earlier digitally and on DVD and Blu-ray and thus reduce what some refer to as the ‘piracy window’,” Bush said of the narrowing window.

While improved availability is key to reducing piracy, theaters will undoubtedly balk at the further erosion of their exclusive window of opportunity. However, according to comments made by DreamWorks Animation chief Jeffrey Katzenberg, release windows could collapse almost entirely in the next ten years.

“I think the model will change and you won’t pay for the window of availability. A movie will come out and you will have 17 days, that’s exactly three weekends, which is 95% of the revenue for 98% of movies,” Katzenberg told the Milken Global Conference in Beverly Hills earlier this year.

“On the 18th day, these movies will be available everywhere ubiquitously and you will pay for the size. A movie screen will be $15. A 75” TV will be $4.00. A smartphone will be $1.99. That enterprise that will exist throughout the world, when that happens, and it will happen, it will reinvent the enterprise of movies,” he said.

In the meantime, the Australian government will try to legislate its way out of the piracy problem, by imposing “three strikes” style schemes on its citizens and pressuring ISPs to take responsibility for the actions of their subscribers.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The prosecutor and police announced that Paul Epifan, 23, and his younger brother Timothy Epifan, 21, had both been charged with theft by deception. Paul Epifan was also charged with pirating the movie.

According to the police on Friday July 10th at around 11:00am, detectives from the very serious-sounding Somerset County Prosecutor’s Major Crimes Squad and detectives from the Manville Police Department received information that the brothers were inside Reading Cinema Movie Theatre in Manville, camming the Bruno movie.

As the brothers left the cinema, detectives stopped them and announced that the par were under arrest. Paul Epifan complied without a struggle, but according to the prosecutor Timothy fled and was pursued by police.

During the chase it’s alleged that Timothy pulled a recording device from his waistband and attempted to delete its contents. Then according to the police at least, Timothy then sustained a broken leg when he attempted to “cross between two police vehicles”, causing him to collide with one of them. There is no mention of any police cars “colliding” with him.

On top of his other alleged crimes, Timothy Epifan was also charged with resisting arrest. The pair will appear in court at a later date.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Well, it seems the Canadians have been at it too.

These days cinemas believe that all paying movie-goers are potential Scene pirates, so when a woman took her two daughters to Cinema Guzzo in Montreal to watch Shrek the Third in 2007, they were searched for camming kit. Big trouble ensued.

Finding a stash of illicit smuggled snacks, staff ordered them returned to their vehicle, to be locked securely away so it would be impossible to consume them while watching the movie. The trio complied.

The search of the bags continued and then, jackpot! Although staff didn’t find the latest DV camera, they did find some birth control pills in the older daughter’s bag, an event that didn’t go unnoticed by her mother. Until this point, she had absolutely no idea her child took them. Understandably angry, the mother sued the cinema for invasion of privacy, demanding $60,000 CAD.

Last week a judge ruled that the staff did indeed breach the privacy of the family and ordered the cinema to pay $10,000 CAD ($9,000 USD). Signs at the point of ticket purchase must clearly state that there is a bag search in place and staff must not put their hands inside people’s bags. Cinema Guzzo failed on both counts, not to mention causing sensitive problems within a family and guaranteeing that they never, ever come back as customers. Fail all round then.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Last week, the extent of the measures became clear, when reporter Kathryn Carr spoke with Alan Coward, a team leader at Vue Cinemas in the UK. “We have staff going in for the first 20 minutes with the goggles, and the last 15 minutes. They also make regular checks in between,” said Alan, adding, “We have also been searching people’s bags on the way in.”

Spying on theater audiences is not an unusual event – US theater-goers have been subject to this treatment for a while now, but such actions are comparatively rare in the UK. Not that the UK is completely innocent when it comes to being a source for camcorded movies. It has been in the past, with movies such as X-Men: The Last Stand, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Pirates of the Carribbean 2 and V for Vendetta, all rumored to have first hit the ‘net from a UK cammer. But despite this handful of high-profile leaks, UK theaters are not a hotbed of camcorder piracy.

The fact that the UK is not a major source of camcorded movies is probably down to most movies being released elsewhere first. ‘Cammers’ like to get the movie quickly, and that usually means recording it from a US or Canadian source, so a UK release is usually unattractive since it comes too late.

However, there are other attractions for those looking to cam a movie in Britain. “If someone is found to be recording the film they would be banned from the cinema for life, and they would probably be arrested,” said Alan Coward. One can’t argue with the ban, but Mr Coward’s assessment of an arrest is fanciful. While criminal law in the UK makes it illegal to offer for sale (or rent) an infringing copy of a copyrighted movie, unlike the United States, Canada and Japan (and much to the disappointment of the MPAA), simply ‘camming’ a movie on its own is not a criminal offense in Britain.

In September 2007, Dan Glickman of the MPAA visited the UK to have meetings with senior people from the UK government and representatives of the UK Film Council. His mission was to persuade the government to introduce legislation to change ‘camming’ from a civil infringement, to a serious criminal offense. So far, that legislation has not appeared. Since theater staff cannot detain a suspected ‘cammer’ by force because the law simply does not allow it, they instead attempt to disrupt the recording by ‘peaceful means’ and notify FACT for further instruction.

However, all the lobbying, bag searches and James Bond-style night vision goggles in the world don’t seem to make any difference to the availability of pirate material. Quantum of Solace is already available on the Internet in Telesync format (video recorded via a good camcorder, with audio added from a ‘direct’ source, such as a T-Loop). It has been available for a few days in French and maybe even another couple of languages but it is now fully available in English, with what many will consider to be a half-decent picture quality.

I’d end this post with a Bond catchphrase, but for Quantum they banned them all. Shame.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

According to reports, October 2007 saw the arrest of a 23 year old man, allegedly caught trying to record or ‘cam’ the new movie, ‘Dan in Real Life‘. He was also in possession of equipment to directly upload the movie to the internet and was likely to have been apprehended by police and theater staff wearing night vision goggles.

The man from Quebec is among the first to be charged under the new legislation which, according to Slyck.com, was rushed through in record time after intense lobbying by the MPAA in the United States.

If convicted, the man faces up to two years in jail. However, should his actions be considered part of a commercial operation, the term jumps to five years and could include forfeiture of assets.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

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.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The recording didn’t cause any losses to Regal Cinemas nor the producers of Transformers, but still Regal Cinemas decided to prosecute to make an example of her..

The Arlington County prosecutor, Richard Trodden, told a Wired blogger that Regal Cinema continued to press the case. “They were saying, ‘Could you get her to admit that it wasn’t right.’ They wanted to make sure the message gets out.”

Indeed, Sejas did later state, “I totally forgot that I was not allowed to do that. I did it without thinking clearly.

In a plea agreement, Sejas pleaded guilty and paid a $71 fine for making an Unlawful Audiovisual Recording of a Motion Picture, a misdemeanor that could have resulted in a fine of up to $2500 and a year in jail. The law was placed on the books in Virgina and 37 other states under pressure by the Motion Picture industry.

Neither Regal Cinemas nor the producers of Transformers stood to take a loss from Sejas’ sharing of a 20-second cell-phone quality clip. The reason it did not occur to Sejas that she was doing something wrong is because she had no criminal intent! Note that Sejas was not charged with any copyright violation, as showing her brother a 20-second low-quality clip certainly would have fallen under Fair Use.

The MPAA decided years ago that copyright laws were not enough in their favor. Instead, the industry had to create new laws that avoided copyright altogether, wait for innocent victims like Sejas to stumble into them, and then make an example of them.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Sejas and her boyfriend were promptly escorted out of the movie theater, still confused about what just happened. “I was crying, I’ve never been in trouble before.”, she later said in a response to the trip to the police station.

Of course Sejas had no intention to sell the 600 millisecond clip, she wasn’t even planning to put it on YouTube. The only thing she wanted to do was show it to her 13 year old brother, who was dying to see the movie himself. Unluckily theater owners just introduced their new zero-tolerance policy since everyone can be a pirate.

Kendrick Macdowell, a representative National Association of Theater Owners said in a response: “We cannot educate theater managers to be judges and juries in what is acceptable. Theater managers cannot distinguish between good and bad stealing.”

Good and bad stealing? Nuts!, the guy obviously has no clue what he’s talking about. If all theater owners treat their customers like this they will start to lose even more money than they already do now. And guess who they will be blaming? Right, Pirates.

Sejas will go to trial later this month for recording a motion picture without permission, and is facing up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine. Seriously unbelievable.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.