Warner Brothers Pulls Canadian Previews

A number of readers let us know that Reuters and others are reporting that Warner Brothers is canceling movie previews in Canadian theaters, starting with Oceans Thirteen. A Warner VP said, "Within the first week of a film's release, you can almost be certain that somewhere out there a Canadian copy will show up." Recently, the International Intellectual Property Association placed Canada on its Priority Watch List, along with the likes of Argentina, China, Russia, Turkey, and Venezuela. This community knows, thanks to Michael Geist, that the claim is mostly ficiton.

Maybe I missed something...

[Corpuscavernosa]

... but where the hell is the correlation between a preview and a pirated full copy of a movie?

Shooting themselves in the foot

[neoform]

Promotional Previews are specifically released in order to help promote the film through positive word of mouth and newspaper reviews..

Do they really think this is somehow going to help them make more revenue if there's no buzz on the street, amongst friends and no reviews in papers?

Talk about stupid. The movie industry seems as stupid as the RIAA labels..

Self-fulfilling prophecy

[Tackhead]

> the studio said it will immediately halt all "promotional and word-of-mouth screenings"

Prediction: by August, there'll be a press release noting that revenues for Ocean's Thirteen and Harry Potter were low, and that it'sss all the faults of those tricksy pirateses stealing their preciousss, and that (surprise, surprise), the only solution is that the Canadian government "harmonize" its rules with the US by passing something equivalent to (or worse than) the DMCA.

Awesome!

[jollyreaper]

Now what can we do as a nation to get them to pull their crappy movies from our theaters?

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[compro01]

they're trying to reduce sales. then they can claim that teh ebil PIRAT3S! are stealing everything and convince the government that they need to "modernize" canadian copyright and IP laws.

it's not stupid. it's moderately smart and it seems to be working quite well in the US.

Seems straightforward to me

[LordPhantom]

Well.... If they're interested in preventing pre-release copies being available, I guess it kind-of makes sense. Don't show movies in theaters that aren't enforcing camcorder bans, etc. If they're trying to prevent piracy in general, it's not going to help much.

This, IMO, is a good first step....

[zappepcs]

All those thieving consumers out there need to be punished. I can only hope that the MPAA members carry forward with step #2 on their route to newfound profits: Stop releasing films, period. That will show those thieving consumers.

Stop 1 - Make movies
Stop 2 - Don't release them to the public
Stop 3 ........
Stop 4 profit! /sarcasm

WTF are they thinking?!

[RingDev]

So in an effort to curb CAMCORDER pirated videos, they are getting rid of previews which will generate word of mouth, reviews, and more sales?!? It's not like we're talking about copied DVDs, or direct rips with full Dolby 7.1 surround sound, we're talking about PoC hand held camera recordings with a single audio channel, wiggling around through out the movie, with people blocking a chunk of the screen and audience noise over the movie...

I hate to break it to them, but anyone who is watching a copy of a movie from that medium was not in a position to actually buy a ticket or DVD.

-Rick

Re:Seems straightforward to me

[orclevegam]

Most of the quality rips you find on bitorrent and such are actually ripped from inside the projection room as opposed to down in the audience. This won't cut back on pre-release copies in the slightest, and honestly I'd bet most of the copies floating around now are from the US and not Canada. This is mostly a PR thing to try and pressure the Canadian government into bending over and lubing up for the MPAA, and has nothing at all to do with piracy.

Re:Lucky Canadians

[stoolpigeon]

the term previews is used frequently for the trailers, commercials, etc. that are shown prior to the beginning of a film. i've been in theaters where they have their canned deal and it will say something about 'following the previews'. i don't know if this is common across all of the u.s. but it is how i have heard it used in each of the areas where i have lived in the u.s.
 
occasionally I've had passes to showings of films a week or two before they came out - and i always have had to explain to people that it was an 'early showing' or some such. if I just said preview, they wouldn't know what I meant, so I think the usage is pretty common.

Publicity Stunt by MPAA

[farrellj]

That's all there is to this...the only people who will be hit by this are the movie critics, and the MPAA is hoping they will raise a fuss about this...I *hope* the critics have a clue about this, and don't take the bait....

ttyl
          Farrell

Re:Lucky Canadians

[StarvingSE]

Can we just tag this article with !trailer and be done with it?!?

Re:Awesome!

[CodeMunch]

Buy Cuban cigars - that's what I'll be doing with my Ocean's 13 pittance.

I'd rather support our godawful tobacco taxes than let those wankers try to dictate how our fair use should work.

Re:WTF are they thinking?!

[superbus1929]

No, this isn't about any sort of legitimate concern; this is a political move.

Warner - and the MPAA by extension - want control of Canada the way they have control of America. This is a political tool to get publicity, and get a few ignorant members or a Tory Parliament to bite and draft up a version of the DMCA for Canada.

The message is clear: assimilate or else.

Re:One thing I wonder about these countries

[Anonymous Coward]

If the United States did to China what China allows to happen to us WRT IP rights, I bet China's government would go nuts. If the federal government allowed piracy of every category of IP to flourish, and to flood the Chinese market with counterfeit goods ranging from clothes to cars, you'd hear an outcry about it.

I know you're trying to prove a point and all, but who exactly would be making these cheap counterfeits? And what would they be couinterfeits of? Are you suggesting that America gear up a brand new manufacturing system to produce cheap knock offs of cheap chinese knock offs?

Just curious.

Oh Dear

[florescent_beige]

Can't say I was really looking forward to seeing Oceans Thirteen. Twelve just struck me as party amongst the upper echelons of Really Really Really Good Looking® society flouncing around in their "aren't we simply FABULOUS darling?" way while deigning to let us watch. One also gets tired of Mr. Clooney being the Sexiest Man In The History of This Planet or Any Other Since His Personal Image Consultant Taught Him to Stop Wiggling His Head Like That.

More to the point, if Warner thinks they can push Canada around with their fabricated numbers they are in for a surprise. The US isn't necessarily every Canadian's favourite country right now and bully tactics are likely to backfire. Plus, if Harper caves he will be judged as an American tody-boy and his Conservatives will find themselves back in the political outhouse for another 15 years, the same way they were after Mulroney sang Danny Boy to Regan like some desperately sycophantic wiener. Harper knows that so he won't be able to make our laws Just Like America, much as he'd love to.

You have to realize that Canada gave away a lot to get the softwood lumber deal, just to see American industry continue to sue us us, obstruct business, and pay off the government to ignore it's own obligations under NAFTA. Canadians are cheesed about this, among other things, so the idea of a puffed up American lawyer dictating how we should run our country is...unwelcome.

So to my American friends, don't worry, we'll take care of business on our end. It would really help, though, if you could slap these Napoleonic dweebs down a bit yourselves.

Re:WTF are they thinking?!

[Fallingcow]

Exactly.

This has nothing to do with what they say it does, and everything to do with making everyone think that Canada is some major rogue when it comes to IP law. This move is, itself, an advertisement for their political position.

At early screening they took everything electronic

[guidryp]

I am in Canada, I saw an early promo screening of "Serenity" and the paranoia was laughable, they were confiscating anything electronic that might have a camera (cellphones etc..) and they came in several times to scan the audience. It was plain silly, I felt like I was in a police state.

I think they should actually follow through with the previous threat and delay all movies in Canada by two weeks, that will be long enough for everyone to get the real buzz on the movie and should result in substantially less people being suckered by hype. Then they can find someone else to blame.

But let's face it, this is not really about Canadians camcordering movies. This is all about greasing public opinion for an attempt to intro more draconian copyright laws in Canada so we can enjoy the benefits of industry lawyers threatening our 12 year old kids and grannies with lawsuits about something they might have infringed and then forking over the money because they are too scared to fight.

My hope is that our current minority government situation will make such draconian changes much more difficult to pass.

Re:One thing I wonder about these countries

[gstoddart]

If the federal government allowed piracy of every category of IP to flourish, and to flood the Chinese market with counterfeit goods ranging from clothes to cars, you'd hear an outcry about it.

That might be a bit difficult to make happen. Most of the production of US goods takes place in places like ... China. There isn't enough manufacturing capacity in the US to 'flood the Chinese market' -- nor could you get it there. The reason China has counterfeit versions of US products is because they're made there (or, in the case of DVDs, they're just pirated on a huge scale because there's a huge market for them).

The United States is really the only country in the world that people expect to respect IP rights.

That's because the US depend on all of the developing nations to do their fabrication for them with cheap foreign labour. The only way the US can make that economically viable is to ensure that everyone else is looking out for their interests ... under threat of sanctions or what have you. Without cheap foreign labour to make their products, US companies could never hope to compete either domestically or abroad.

This is why when countries like Thailand who are battling huge AIDS epidemics say the hell with it and mandate the production of cheap generic drugs, the US firms go ape -- they can't afford to actually heal people unless they're making truckloads of profit. The developing nations can't hope to spend $10K/month/year/whatever per person. Bottom line, it isn't cost effective to save the lives of poor people. Shitty, huh?

Is it because we're "too rich?" Whatever happened to the Golden Rule and Categorical Imperative?

It's because everyone else is too poor. People in developing nations can't actually pay for the goods at the prices the US companies would like to charge. So they resort to wide scale piracy, knock offs, and what have you.

They're not out to get you because your rich, they just don't see why they should do without or pay ridiculous fees to US companies.

We in the West like the idea of globalization as long as it gets us cheap products and preserves our jobs. But, in the long run, you can't actually have both. Basically, it's what happens when decades of old-school colonial/imperialism mentality meets modern economic realities.

Cheers

Re:WTF are they thinking?!

[debest]

This is a political tool to get publicity, and get a few ignorant members or a Tory Parliament to bite and draft up a version of the DMCA for Canada.

Exactly what I see, too. All the major network channels are hyping this story for their nightly news programs tonight. "Laying the groundwork" to make sure that the issue is known for the upcoming legislation, and that the industry's side is seen as the reasonable and desirable choice among the uninformed.

We need more guys like Micheal Geist (preferably someone in the radio or television business). Then again, I guess that if someone were to express such a viewpoint, they would be on radio or television very long.

Re:Awesome!

[baKanale]

Now what can we do as a nation to get them to pull their crappy movies from our theaters?

What I want to know is what can America do as a nation to get us to pull our crappy movies from our own theaters?