The Manic Mechanic

I read here that Hollywood claims that 50 percent of all pirated movies originate from Canada. Reasons given for this vary from the Canadian copyright laws being too lax, to the multilingual releases found in Montreal and Quebec having a broader demand worldwide. Movie industry types complain that "internal policies of police forces including the RCMP, make it extremely difficult for them to crack down on movie piracy".

I am assuming that Canadian theatregoers would not appreciate those broad-brimmed RCMP hats blocking their view of the screen, and the horses would be a distracting and wanting popcorn handouts.

Jesus T. Cruise, people. While I am all for artists and performers as well as their industries and backers getting what is due to them, I see their 'war on piracy' to be about as effective as the dubious 'war on drugs'. Quite often the source of pirated movies come not from the camcordered tapes from theatergoers, but quite often are DVD 'screeners' sent out to reviewers and industry types. In short, their own back yard. What truly gets me, especially in the U.S., is how much the industry coddles up to the government to created draconian laws for minor infractions and uses the notion of fighting piracy as a caliper to quietly push for regulations and technical measures designed solely to limit what honest, paying consumers can do with the media they own. At the rate things are going, one will have to charge admission to people other than direct family members who get invited over to their friend's homes for a movie night. These fees, of course, will have to be sent directly to the movie indsutries themselves to recover from 'lost revenue'.

Mark my words. Your TiVo will one day charge you to use the 'rewind' button.

This whole ordeal makes me wonder... Do Canadian pirates say "Aaarrrrrhhh" like 'standard' pirates do, or is it more like "Eeehhhhhhh...rrrrr"? ;)