Hollywood is giving Canada the shaft again. You may remember that back in January we told you about Fox’s utterly idiotic plan to fight camcording Canadian pirates by refusing to release their movies in the country unless the country’s legislature tightened anti-piracy laws. Now it’s Warner Bros’ turn to play piracy prosecution blackmail.
The WB is about to say "hey there you knobs!" to Canada's fleshy-headed pirate mutants by cutting off all advance screenings of their films in the country. Apparently our Canuck neighbors from up north there love illegally recording movies and selling them for profit, and the country really doesn’t have much in the way of laws to stop it. So while we Americans have to bend over and submit to camera hunting cavity searches if we’re caught with a Treo, those hosers get to bring in a Spielberg’s worth of recording equipment virtually unmolested.
The hypocrisy in the WB’s decision though is that they’re cutting off advance screenings in Canada while continuing to engage in the outdated, staggered global release date practice which promotes piracy just about everywhere else. Spider-Man 3 opened in Japan several days before it did here in the US. Does anyone actually think there weren’t people here in America frantically searching the web for a copy of it hours after the film’s Japanese premiere? Downloaders love being first, and a lot of the piracy audience could be eliminated by simply releasing their movies simultaneously all over the globe. But, Warner Brothers would rather try to goad the Canadian legislature into making laws based on Hollywood whims.
In the end, I don’t think this is a move that will really matter. At first I was worried that this might mean our Canadian critical brethren were being cut out of the reviewing process by the all powerful karate chop of Michigan J. Frog, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. The Hollywood Reporter says it's “promotional and word-of-mouth screenings” which are being cancelled. That seems to leave the window open for them to still screen movies for the reviewing press. It wouldn’t make much sense to cut them off, their jobs depend on being there and the odds of any legitimate press member camcording a movie are practically zero.
