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BLACK 2F pagelabeltag 2F THE PALM BEACH POST SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 9, 2007 MAGENTA In Montreal cinemas, movie pirates flourish One in six copies of movies stolen from the screen comes from the city, an industry group says. Matthew Lynn European Business Don't bar personal Web use at work 1 1 1 1 mm iff jL.tr 1 ti JOHN MORSTADBloomberg News goggles to catch 'cammers' who sneak video recorders in to copy movies. Copies can net $3,000. A man stands at a Cinema Guzzo megaplex in Montreal. Owner Vince Guzzo's uses night-vision By CHRIS FOURNIER Bloomberg News MONTREAL Pirates of the Caribbean aren't the only thieves appearing in Vince Guzzo's movie theaters.

So many patrons have smuggled video recorders into Guzzo's 12 Montreal cinemas to pirate films, he's using night-vision goggles to catch them in the dark. "I caught four people trying to camcord Pirates of the Caribbean," said Guzzo, 38. "There are two types of people doing this: One type does it for kicks, then you have the professional criminal." Guzzo's experience shows how Montreal's so-called cam-mers are a headache for Hollywood studios. Guzzo said he has caught about a dozen, including one who tried to record with a camera hidden inside a motorcycle helmet. One in six movie copies made by illegally recording from the screen originates in Montreal, according to the Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association, whose members include Time Warner Warner Bros.

Entertainment and News Twentieth Century Fox. Bootlegs made in Montreal have turned up for sale as DVDs in 45 countries, said Serge Corriveau, an investigator for the group. "If it gets recorded on Friday, it hits the street on Saturday," said Barry Newstead, a Toronto-based vice president and general manager at Twentieth Century Fox. "It has a huge impact." The Motion Picture Association of America estimates that film piracy cost producers, distributors, theaters, video shops and pay-per-view television operators $18.2 billion in lost revenue in 2005. Illegal copies also are made from advance DVDs issued for reviewing and marketing, and from stolen prints.

Canada is paying a price for tolerating pirates. Warner Bros, in May canceled promotional screenings in Canada, saying 70 percent of its releases had been cammed there in the previous 18 months. The International Intellectual Property Alliance, which represents 1,900 U.S. companies that produce films, books, software and other goods protected by copyright, placed Canada alongside China and Russia on its list of worst offenders. Bowing to the pressure, the federal government changed the criminal code in June.

Cammers now face as long as two years in jail for recording in a theater. Police previously had to prove intent to distribute in order to bring charges. One Ottawa man was arrested under the new law in June and will appear in court in September. Peel Regional Police, a municipal force, said they arrested 18 people this month and seized more than 40,000 DVDs with a street value of Most of the movies were still playing in theaters, said Gary Osmond, an investigator for the Canadian distributors association. Cammers are hard to catch because they use devices that have a night mode for recording in the dark and disseminate pirated films over the Internet, according to a former Montreal cammer who asked to remain anonymous.

He said the illegality of the act is its allure, and being first to record a new movie bestows status among in French as well as English, said Corriveau, who worked for the RCMP for 27 years. Films dubbed in French tend to be released in Montreal first, so copies may be the first to reach other French-language markets, said Pat Marshall, a spokeswoman for Cineplex Entertainment LP, which operates 14 theaters in Montreal. Film enthusiasts such as Dan Yates say that studio executives are blaming cammers for a problem that is their own fault. "Anytime I've seen a downloaded movie that's a pirated copy, it's really good quality, and those can only come from within the industry," said Yates, an employee at Montreal DVD exchange shop La Legende. "Most people aren't going to watch camera jobs because they're really bad quality." Hollywood is exaggerating the camcording effect in order to portray Canada as a Fires devastate families relying on Greece's famous olive groves Panama Canal seeks billion for expansion Surf on, comrades.

The U.K. Trades Union Congress has jumped to the defense of workers who goof around on the Internet while they are meant to be slaving away. As employers clamp down on the way their staff use the Internet in the office, unions are staging some resistance. Companies with "Internet usage policies" and restrictions on Facebook and other social-networking sites are just making themselves look ridiculous. They didn't complain when new technology allowed "work" to invade our "home life." They have no right to complain now that "home" is invading our "work life." There is little mistaking the debate in the United Kingdom and it is one that is likely to be replicated in every other developed economy.

How we use our computers at work may not quite rank with global warming or the subprime crisis in the league tables of crucial issues. Yet it may well have more impact on how most of us live our daily lives. Most office workers have a computer screen and an Internet connection on their desks. Mostly, they will be using that for work. Some of the time, they will be using it for the stuff of everyday life: checking their bank balance, e-mailing their friends or researching which brand of golf club might finally get their swing sorted out.

Employers, not surprisingly, put some restrictions on that. A survey by the U.K.'s Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform found that 89 percent of big companies and 63 percent of all companies had an "acceptable usage policy." Likewise, 80 percent of big companies monitor usage. Employees are entitled to spend at least part of the day online. While it is reasonable for employers to stop their staff looking at pornographic, violent or racist Web sites, if they try and restrict day-to-day surfing, it's pointless. There are three reasons for that.

First, the Internet has blurred old boundaries between work and non-work time. We all check our e-mails and take business calls on our mobiles when we are "off" work. So our bosses can hardly complain if we do our banking, plan our holidays or just relax by sending e-mail jokes in the workplace. Next, people have to interact with the world around them. They need to be aware of what is happening elsewhere.

While they may appear to be surfing aimlessly, employees might well be picking up valuable information. Lastly, there is an element of double standards. The same companies that prevent staff from surfing are happy to make money from other people's employees doing it. Aren't they spending fortunes on Web advertising? The reality is that you can no more hope to con- trol people using the Web than you can control them using the office phone to ring their mother, or asking the secretary to buy their children a present. Overall, the Internet has made everyone more productive.

It has certainly meant they are always chained to the office. To complain about 4 people using the Internet at work is just mean-spirited. Matthew Lynn is a columnist for Bloomberg News. piracy haven, said Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa professor and specialist in Internet law. "If camcording is a problem, it's a very small problem," Geist said.

The studios had $42.6 billion of revenue last year, according to the Hollywood Reporter newspaper. Nonetheless, cammers are changing the moviegoing experience in Montreal. Guzzo searches customers' bags for recording equipment. Cineplex Entertainment also uses night-vision goggles and rewards employees who catch cammers. Fans may be the last line of defense.

Audiences may not tolerate activity that lets others see movies without buying a ticket. "If they notice anything in our theaters, they're bringing it to the attention of local management," Cineplex Entertainment's Marshall said. "Consumers are now helping." Poland grew 6.9 percent, Slovakia 9.4 percent and Latvia 11.3 percent, all in line with recent quarters. China: U.S. politics drive tariff gripe BEIJING China said domestic politics were behind bids by the United States and Mexico to have the World Trade Organization open investigations into allegations Beijing provides illegal subsidies for a range of industries.

The two countries accuse Beijing of using WTO-prohibited tax breaks to encourage Chinese companies to boost exports, while imposing tax and tariff penalties to limit purchases of foreign products in China. The Commerce Ministry said in a statement posted on the government's main Web site that the allegations were based on "huge misunderstandings." The U.S. trade deficit set a record for the fifth consecutive year last year at $765.3 billion. Liberia cracks down on payroll 'ghosts' MONROVIA, Liberia Civil servants in Liberia will soon be required to submit to digital fingerprinting and eye and face scans, with the government saying it wants to make sure real people are behind the names on the payroll after discovering more than 7,000 "ghost workers." Civil Service Agency Director-General William Allen told The Associated Press that all civil servants would be required to submit to the scans and their data would be recorded in a central database to root out the practice of one person collecting paychecks under several names. In January 2006, there were about 44,700 names listed on government payrolls.

After months of investigations, 7,300 names were removed. cammers. A good-quality copy can fetch as much as $3,000 for cammers, according to the motion picture association. Guzzo said he thinks only one of the cammers he caught was in it for the money, while the rest did it for kicks. "I compare them with hackers," said Royal Canadian Mounted Police Staff Sgt.

Noel St-Hilaire, leader of a Montreal-based team that investigates movie piracy. "You're screwing the system." The furtive recordings make their way to illicit DVD markets like the ones in Toronto's Pacific Mall, where 400 tightly packed shops sell everything from car parts to plane tickets. Recent releases such as Spider-Man 3 and The Simpsons Movie can be had for about Cammers may target Montreal movie houses because they show blockbuster movies rounds the village, from the valley below to the mountain peaks in the distance. The village's main source of income was olive oil, said Dimos Kokaliaris, 42, whose father lives in Makistos. Now he fears the inhabitants will simply move away.

"I had olive trees I had planted as a child. Now there's nothing left. Nothing," he said. "Now we'll see what we can do. Replant perhaps." Yiannis Pothos, 19, is one of many whose family long ago abandoned village life for the city, but his father had returned to Makistos and restored his ancestral home.

Now the house is rubble, gutted in flames so intense that the windows melted. "There is absolutely nothing left of agricultural land. All the olive trees are burned, all the vineyards, and the animals that survived have nothing to eat," he said. The family made wine and 2 tons of olive oil a year to supplement its income. "This year, we'll have nothing." But others in Makistos are much worse off, he said.

"There are people who are 80 years old whose houses were burned. They can't leave, this is their home," Pothos said. "When someone lives off the olive harvest, what will he do now? If someone has animals, what will they do? What will they eat, charcoal?" PETROS GIANNAKOURISThe Associated Press Theoni Konstantopoulou 77, stands among her burned olive trees in the village of Artemida, in southwestern Greece, on Aug. 29. The overall industry is healthy but the damage is crippling for many.

By ELENA BECAT0R0S The Associated Press ARTEMIDA, Greece The smoldering trunks of olive trees stretch across mountain slopes and valleys, their precious fruit lying like pellets of charcoal on the blackened ground. As far as the eye can see, the groves that produce one of Greece's best known exports have been devastated. Ten days of forest fires killed 65 people but have laid waste to at least 469,000 acres of land, most of it in the Pelo-ponnese, the glove-shaped southern peninsula where about a third of Greece's olive oil is produced. The flames might not devastate the overall olive oil industry in Greece, the world's third-largest producer: Initial estimates indicate about 4 percent of average annual production will be lost. But thousands of farmers face ruin, and villages already struggling to survive an exodus of young people have taken another big hit.

"This may not have a big effect on the macro scale, but on a micro scale, the impact is huge," said Gregory Antonia-dis, chairman of the Greek Association of Industries and Processors of Olive Oil. The Finance Ministry reckons half the farm production of the fire-hit areas has been destroyed. In a culture where olive oil is sometimes called liquid gold, the spectacle of gnarled old olive trees going up in flames is especially painful. In this mountainous region 40 miles from ancient Sparta, olives provide 60 percent of farmers' income. Newly planted trees need seven to 10 years to bear fruit, and farmers "won't have any income from olive cultivation during that time," Antoniadis said.

Nikos Bokaris, head of the Greek Union of Forestry Ex- Palm Beach Post Wire Services PANAMA CITY The operator of the Panama Canal, the 50-mile waterway that links the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, plans to raise $2 billion in financing from international capital markets to help pay for the construction of a third traffic lane to accommodate bigger ships. The rest of the funding needed in the $5.25 billion expansion will come from cash generated from shipping fees, said Alberto Aleman Zubieta, chief executive of the Panama Canal Authority. Construction began last week on the project, the first expansion of the 93-year-old canal, which will add a new set of locks to accommodate larger ships by 2014. Twenty-seven percent of the world's container ships are now too big to navigate the canal without the expansion, rising to 37 percent by 2011, the operator has said. Euro-zone growth dips as construction slows BRUSSELS, Belgium Growth in the 13 nations that use the euro narrowed to 2.5 percent in the second quarter because of waning demand in the building sector during the spring, the EU's statistical agency said.

It was the slowest rate of growth in a year. In the three months ended June 30, Eurostat said, the euro currency area grew just 0.3 percent from the first quarter, largely due to a dramatic drop in the building trade after it soaked up work during an unusually mild winter and because of diminished investments. In the first quarter, the euro area expanded by 3.2 percent year-on-year, and 0.7 percent from the previous three-month period. Growth in the German economy, the EU's largest, fell to 2.5 percent, and France fell to 1.3 percent. However, smaller, fast-growing Eastern European nations kept up their rapid clip.

perts, calls it "an irreparable social and economic catastrophe" that has left its survivors "unable to meet their daily needs." One survivor, Theoni Kostandopoulou, stood among the blackened stumps of her trees and wept. "What will we do without oil?" she cried. "Now they're burned and we've lost them, what will become of us?" When Kostandopoulou arrived in the mountain village of Artemida more than 40 years ago, her field had just five olive trees. She and her husband planted dozens more, as well as fruit trees, vines and a vegetable garden on the edge of the village. The 77-year-old woman said she sat outside her house all night splashing water on it and managed to save it while others burned to the ground.

But her crops were destroyed. The government has announced a $400 million aid package including an initial $4,100 for each family that lost belongings and a $13,600 payment for those that lost a house. Farmers are to get $818 for each acre of burned olive groves, while private donations from Greeks for fire relief total over $52 million. In Makistos, a few miles from Artemida, up to 50 of the 65 houses were gutted, residents said, and a vast expanse of charred earth sur.