Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to all of you for being here today.
I want to focus on one specific area, and that is film piracy--specifically, camcorder piracy. Recent statistics indicate that more than 90% of pirated films seized throughout the world are coming from camcording; 190 of these films have been camcorded in Canada since 2003. Copies of these films have been downloaded from over 130 different Internet release groups and found on pirated discs in over 45 countries. Camcordings sourced to Canadian theatres actually accounted for about 20% of the worldwide total of copies identified under theatrical camcording.
This has become a huge issue, and our understanding is that both the RCMP and the police are limited in terms of actions they can take to address this issue. Local police refuse to respond on the basis that the copyright is a federal enforcement mandate. There's no specific prohibition in the Criminal Code against camcording; that has been cited by local police as justification for refusal to take action. Similarly, the RCMP sometimes do not respond to, or fail to respond to, camcording incidents, and they point to the current provisions of the Copyright Act as requiring proof that the copy of the film being camcorded is actually being made for commercial purposes.
I have some suggested verbiage, Mr. Chair, for amendments to the Criminal Code that would make camcording in a theatre an offence in Canada's Criminal Code. Would you, as witnesses with some understanding of this issue and the broader issue of copyright law, believe it could be an appropriate measure to actually change the Criminal Code? To cut off this practice, which seems to be an underground growth industry in Canada, would you support changing the Criminal Code and amending it to make camcording in a theatre an offence under the Criminal Code?