Northern Pirates

Not surprisingly, by the time the suits catch up to what's going on in the world, they're four steps behind.

The Governator was in Canada this week and after his stop in the PMO (that's Prime Minister's Office/Office of the Prime Minister to the NPS <-non-public servant) Ottawa tabled legislation to make the "camcording" of movies in theatres illegal. Did you know that in Canada we apparently didn't have a useful law against that? I had no idea!

Anyway, I don't care at all if they pass this legislation or not for a couple of reasons; nobody wants those crappy camcorder downloads anyway, I think we're all aware that having an official rule against this activity will not stop it, and of course, because the suits are four steps behind.

"A study by AT&T in 2003 found that about 23 per cent of online movie file sharing networks got their material from camcording.

The other 77 per cent of movies available on the internet came from screeners — industry-issued, high-quality copies of films sent to people such as actors, reviewers and film award voters — and other commercially sold copies."

The politicians must be quite pleased with themselves for appearing to do something to appease the downloading-adverse in Hollywood.

I'm reminded of the debut album title of a jazz band in my university residence: "No Showy Diplomacy". If I ever find myself in office, that quote will be the inspirational poster over my desk.

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