Quebec wants Hollywood to explain why their movies aren’t dubbed in their country’s language. Last year, leader of Action Démocratique du Québec Mario Dumont wanted to enforce it by law, when he noticed how his kids couldn’t understand the Parisian dialect of the French ‘Shrek the Third.’ “We will ask the studios to explain to us how we can ensure, without resorting to a law, that Quebec citizens have access to versions dubbed into French in Quebec,” Pierre Curzi said.

It seems to me like a simple business reason, since Quebec only has around 7.5 million inhabitants. But Quebec is threatening with a law. “The [studios] don’t want a law, to avoid other countries adopting similar legislation,” Curzi added. “That’s legitimate, but us, we want cultural products adapted to our wishes.” It would cost studios $75,000 a film to dub them into their language. And now the Motion Picture Association of America has to explain why some studios don’t do this. It’s not too difficult to guess their answer: “money.”

The time of directly fighting piracy is over. Film companies have to change their business models to survive challenges by digital distribution. This is what News Corp. Peter Chernin said this weekend, at the National Cable & Telecommunications Association’s convention. “We look at this as an opportunity, hopefully profitable. The challenge is how do we protect our margins, especially our margins of existing distribution. We’ve got to look at new forms of distribution as an opportunity for content providers,” Chernin said.

“We all have a vested interest in protecting copyright, but we all need to find the best ways to deliver our content to customers where and when they want it and at an affordable price. If we do not find a legal way to do that, people will find illegal ways,” he added. Chernin echoed the general idea the MPAA opted last month. They said the movie industry has “to give folks the choices they desire — legally — in the comfort of their homes and wherever else they wish to enjoy our movies.“

It is as if the industry is opening its eyes. Stopping piracy by regulation is nearly impossible and the only solution for them is putting a better (legal) product on the market.

In addition to the $111 million approved by the court below, the MPAA wants another $15 million from The Pirate Bay in damages for copyright infringement.

The Pirate Bay is one of the most used illegal download site and says to have over 2.5 million users. Among the most popular movies are ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘The Pink Panther.’ Most of these movies were released even before they came out on DVD and therefore the fine per movie is even higher.

As seen on their site, The Pirate Bay doesn’t take these threats too seriously. With a popular site like this they’d be filthy rich by now anyway.

That’s a big ‘oops’ for Torrentspy, the download site that went down last March because of the ongoing court battle. If you ever thought it would be a good idea to start up a torrent site and have some fun, this should make you think otherwise. Torrentspy juts got ordered to pay the MPAA $111 million, $30,000 x 3,700 violations (movies). A great victory for the Motion Picture Association of America.

Needless to say, site owner Valence Media LLC filed for bankruptcy.

New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo is backing a law that will make recording a movie a misdemeanor for first-time offenders. Doing so could get you up to one year in jail and a $1,000 fine. Doing it again could turn it into a felony, with even higher penalties. Cuomo noted 140,000 jobs are lost because of piracy annually and as stated many times before by the MPAA, it cost the film industry over $6 billion in 2005.

If you get caught recording a movie now, it’s equal to a misdemeanor, like getting a parking ticket. But this new bill is not here to stop the average kid from recording a movie. “This is modern-day organized crime,” Cuomo said. “The wide distribution of pirated films originating from New York costs our state vital economic resources, including thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in tax revenue.“

Apple stock jumped over 2% when the company announced they are going to release movies simultaneous with their physical counterpart DVD. Normally the iTunes store would have to wait over a month to get a new movie in, but most Hollywood studios are now releasing their babies right onto the net.

The news comes just days after the MPAA stated the industry was too slow with adjusting to their ‘tech-savvy’ crowd. The time has come for Hollywood to embrace digital distribution. “This is a really good example of how they are moving more quickly toward it and we think Apple is best-positioned (to benefit),” said analyst Shannon Cross of Cross Research.

A iTunes movie will only set you back between $9.99 and $14.99, which isn’t as overprices as you would expect. Not at all. The major drawback however, still seems the limited playback capability of all digital downloads. In this case mostly restricted to Apple hardware. When will we see an universal format we can play and keep forever?

In a speech at the National Press Club, Motion Picture Association of America president Dan Glickman said the movie industry had to adjust to the current ‘tech-savvy generation.’ The MPAA actually realized the people downloading movies still go to the theater in much greater numbers than the average consumer.

While he felt that regulation is still needed, he said, “We also know that consumers increasingly want to enjoy our films in new ways. We have to give folks the choices they desire — legally — in the comfort of their homes and wherever else they wish to enjoy our movies.“

Basically admitting legal downloading always was and still isn’t where it has to be to satisfy consumers. “There are technology and policy issues to work through. [...] I think we’ll soon see some progress that will really open up how exciting this future could be for all of us,” Glickman said.

After that, he lightly touched upon net neutrality. The MPAA is still in favor of regulating internet usage, but he said “laws of unintended consequences are always applicable. We need to be extremely cautious before going down this road.“

While the word isn’t fully out yet, some in Hollywood are taking note of network neutrality. If you don’t know what net neutrality is, it basically means no one would be able to control the internet. ‘Evil companies’ are currently pushing federal rules to be able to control what you are allowed to do on the internet. If your internet company would make a deal with a film company, the film company could get priority over this website. And they could slow down your access to this page. Or for example stop you from sharing movies, legal or illegal.

As you might expect, the Motion Picture Association of America would like companies to be able to do this, so they could stop piracy. They say net neutrality will cause them to lose the tools to stop piracy. Others in the industry favor net neutrality, out of fear it would affect independent film making. People use tools like BitTorrent for illegal downloading, but more and more it’s used for legal movie distribution too.

The problem at the moment, I think, is awareness. If Hollywood really gets into this, it might be another artists vs. the studios story. With the artists seeking total freedom and the studios doing what will make them the most money, which is probably regulating and controlling the internet.

Alexandre Aja was quite surprised when his new horror ‘Mirrors’ with Kiefer Sutherland didn’t get chopped up by the MPAA. Aja, who previously directed ‘The Hills Have Eyes,’ said “I’m still in shock of what they let us keep. We made the movie we wanted and I won’t even have enough footage for an unrated cut [on DVD].”

Rated R (not under 17 without a parent), Aja thinks the MPAA went easy on them because of the supernatural theme. But while there is no raping by mutants like his last movie, he does grinningly mention they “do have a reflection of a mother cutting the throat of her 12-year-old little girl and that hasn’t been a problem [with the MPAA] either.”

‘Mirrors’ will hit the theaters August 15 this year. For the full interview, check the link below.

The Motion Picture Association of America is giving pullmylink.com some extra traffic by suing them. In a new search to stop illegal downloads the MPAA is now suing sites linking to pirated content, not just hosting it.

Since the last movie pullmylink.com posted is Stop Loss on April 9, the site has been pretty quiet. So their tactics must be working. O wait, I just linked to a site linking to illegal content. Can I get sued now too?

While Bollywood might be losing $4 billion a year, the MPAA notes in 2005 the US film industry lost a small $18.2 billion. Yes, that’s a lot of jobs.