Criminal Offences

A person may go to jail or face a fine when they pirate software. The following are examples of pirating:

• “Makes unauthorised copies e.g. burning music files or films on to CD-Rs or DVD-Rs;
• Distributes, sells or hires out unauthorised copies of CDs, VCDs and DVDs;
• On a larger scale, distributes unauthorised copies as a commercial enterprise on the internet;
• Possesses unauthorised copies with a view to distributing, selling or hiring these to other people;
• While not dealing commercially, distributes unauthorised copies of software packages, books, music, games, and films on such a scale as to have a measurable impact on the copyright owner's business;
• Publishing someone else's original copy work and claiming you have made it. (This is known as plagiarism and is completely different from copyright infringement, but laws concerning it come under the section of copyright law in some countries);
• Certain copyrights allow Archival copies of software to be made however these are not to be distributed.”

The Toronto Star stated that before the movie Bon Cop Bad Cop was released, a man in Montreal was found selling 2500 copies of the movie door-to-door. This evidently led the Legislation of Canada to make it a Criminal Offence if a person records a movie in a theater. When you record a movie illegal in a movie theater you could:

• Become liable to imprisonment up to two years; and
• Recording for commercial purposes of a movie shown in a theatre – you come become liable to imprisonment up to five years.

Canada was once said to have, “At one point responsible for half of pirated films in global circulation.”

“When the United States made some changes to their legal regime [we] saw cam cording increase in Canada so that would be a good indication to me that getting some greater support does make a difference.”

Obviously, if the criminal code isn’t put into effect, then more pirated movies will be on the market for purchase. Sometimes its great to see a movie you love over and over again before it comes onto DVD, but you have to admit that the quality of the product isn’t that great. From experience I know what this is like. I borrowed my friend’s DVD who, brought it from a store in China Town, and when I was watching it, people were getting up from their seats and walking to the other side, blocking the picture for a few moments. Then again, they would come back and sit in their seats again. As well, half-way through the movie, the voices of the actors weren’t following how their lips were moving, making it very, very, very unrealistic, almost like a foreign movie with English actors replacing the language. After watching that, I don’t think I watched a pirated movie since. Actually, no I’m lying; I just watched a pirated copy of Transformers the other day with my friend, whoops.

Check out these videos:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=eMhGzoLx0qo (south park)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Pnjyrzkepo (advestiment)

Sources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/220696

http://www.parl.gc.ca/common/bills_ls.asp?lang=E&ls=c59&source=library_prb&Parl=39&Ses=1