Usefully Useless

Click here. It’s a video clip which you’re not allowed to view due to a copyright claim from BBC Worldwide. The clip is Top Gear related stuff, as far as I’m aware it was never shown on the show.

Since as a UK resident and licence fee payer, I have automatic right to view BBC content, I’m wondering what the hell they’re playing at.

From the this is so stupid it has to be a joke department. Movie industry body wants police to enforce their copyrights. This is the British Video Association (yep, another trade cartel) who want the police to enforce their business model.

“Films are increasingly being shown first in Britain and, if they are not, the time gap between them being screened in America and coming over here is narrowing. This makes the European market more and more vulnerable to fake films from Britain.”

So Britain is already vulnerable to fake films from America. So why aren’t you guys lobbying to make copyright a criminal offence in the US? Yep, because they told you to go forth and multiply. Copyright is a civil matter and should remain so.

A BVA survey suggests that the use of illegal DVDs deprived cinemas of £183m last year.

Say it ain’t so! These figures come straight out of their arseholes. What they do, and this is what they’re not telling you, is assume that every single dodgy DVD is a lost cinema ticket. By the BVA’s reasoning, that dodgy DVD you bought at a market for £2.50 is a £20 trip to the cinema. These guys are so wholesale disconnected from reality that it’s likely drugs are involved.

In their motion, the MPs are urging the government to follow France, Italy and Spain in banning filming in cinemas.

As the Government rightly states, piracy is already illegal.

It notes “that camcording in cinemas is the source of 90% of first-release fake DVDs seized and illicit film files on the internet”.

Because there’s a market demand the movie makers don’t want to address. We want to watch the movie at home, not wait several months for the DVD to be released. Cams are awful quality and really don’t threaten anyone, but they do satisfy some of the demand. Free market’s a wonderful thing.

It adds that “camcording in cinemas is not a criminal offence, making films particularly vulnerable when they are premiered in the UK”.

It isn’t in the US either, yet most films premiere in the US. Post hoc ergo prompter hoc. If it were that big a problem, wouldn’t films start to premiere where the laws are more oppressive? Why don’t they? Because it’s utterly irrelevant. No movie fan will be satisfied with a cam release, they’ll go buy the DVD just as soon as they can. Many of them, however, balk at paying upwards of £20-£30 to see a movie once when a DVD is around the same price and far better value.

The law isn’t the problem here. Copyright is not a criminal offence, it should not be a criminal offence, we’ve got the law as it is perfectly sound. A bunch of corrupt bribed MPs ought not to have the influence to change that.