A Blockbuster Sentence for Movie Piracy in Canada
A Canadian man has been sentenced to jail time for recording movies via camcorder ("camming") in Montreal theatres and subsequently distributing the material for sale and/or rental over the internet. Following a guilty plea, Geremi Adam, who operated online as MaVen, was sentenced to 2 1/2 months in prison along with 100 hours of community service and a two-year suspended sentence.
The notorious activities of MaVen attracted the attention of both the FBI and the RCMP and, along with other acts of movie piracy, resulted in maligning the reputation of Canada as a hotbed of movie piracy due to purportedly weak copyright protections and enforcement. Indeed during 2006, prolific camming, music and movie piracy and the lack of consistency between United States and Canadian copyright laws resulted in Hollywood studios threatening to boycott Canadian distribution altogether.
As a result, the federal government amended the Criminal Code in 2007 (Bill C-59) to provide harsher sentencing for recording, selling or renting illegal recordings of movies, including sentences of up to five years for camming movies for future sale or rental, while pursuing wide-ranging amendments to the Copyright Act (Bill C-32) . While the MaVen case pre-dates the Criminal Code amendments, the former maximum sanctions contained in the Criminal Code included a maximum of six months in jail and a $25,000 fine for distributing copyright material over the internet without permission.
