Chris Barton: Idiotic law reads like a horror movie script

COMMENT

All New Zealanders are now banned from watching movies for nine months from the films' international release - unless they buy the DVD/video version overseas themselves, or unless local movie distributors decide we can watch it earlier.

Ridiculous. The state knows best. Protectionism for Hollywood moguls. The return of the Luddites. All of the above apply to this monumentally absurd legislation passed on October 21.

The vote on the Copyright (Parallel Importation of Films and Onus of Proof) Amendment Bill 2002 was 82 in favour with only Act and National (35) opposing.

How could so many be so silly? The act's architect, Associate Minister of Commerce Judith Tizard explains: "This will give the film distribution industry a period of protection to allow for the orderly release of films, videos and DVDs ... It aims to ensure that New Zealand picture theatres, particularly in rural and small communities, can continue to offer a wide range of film titles to New Zealand audiences."

The movie er ... plot goes like this: Theatres are under attack by a handful of renegade entrepreneurs bringing disorder to New Zealand by parallel-importing DVDs and selling them - sometimes ahead of their local release. The rich, lazy film distributors want to release films how they always have - late. So they wine, dine and lobby Government ministers who quickly change the law to drum the parallel-importers out of town.

Unfortunately it's not a movie. And there's no evidence that imported DVDs are causing any problems for small or rural theatres. If they are having problems, it's far more likely to be because of rubbish films, uncomfortable seats and bad service. DVDs, like videos, are a reality theatres must learn to live with. Legislating against them is beyond draconian.

But that's what has happened - a great leap backward - for the most spurious of reasons, as espoused by Green spokesman Mike Ward: "This bill protects interesting experiences. It protects the ability to go to the movies."

What's next - bringing back the interesting experiences of 6 o'clock closing in pubs and black-and-white TVs?

The only thing protected here is the bloated movie distributors such as Columbia TriStar and Roadshow Entertainment which, at the behest of the movie industry giants, are controlling how and when we can watch films. It's an abuse of power that had been effectively stopped with the introduction of parallel importing.

The about-face shows just how aberrant copyright law has become. Instead of protecting the rights of artists - who, incidentally, still get royalty payments on parallel imports - copyrights are being misused to prop up monopolistic distributors. Their unbridled arrogance led to the unnecessary control of DVD distribution worldwide through restrictive zoning codes on discs and players that divide the world into regions. Thankfully the scheme is failing through the sale of multi-zone players and the widespread availability of fixes and patches to make players accept all DVDs regardless of region codes.

But the biggest hypocrisy of this new law is that it's OK for individuals to import new-release DVDs from sites such as Amazon, eBay and Blackstar - denying the Government GST in the process. But it's not OK for New Zealand businesses such as Real Groovy Records or Marbecks to do the same - and pay their GST.

This law harms consumer choice, harms local small businesses and ensures many movies will run here nine months late.

* Email Chris Barton

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Ian mentioned mail2web as another way to get your email via the web when travelling - although I found it doesn't work with Xtra accounts.

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