From: kadie@eff.org (Carl M. Kadie) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies,alt.censorship Subject: Nova Scotia film censorship board doubling its budget Date: 2 May 1994 13:24:48 -0400 Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation Lines: 157 Message-ID: <2q3d10$s1v@eff.org> [Here is a repost with permission from the parker-l mailing list. The mailing list is for the posting of, and discussion of, the newspaper columns of Parker Barss Donham. To subscribe send email to "listserv@nstn.ns.ca" with line "sub Parker-L " - Carl] Parker Barss Donham's column 1 May 1994 ----------------------------------------------------------------- If Nova Scotia Finance Minister Bernie Boudreau is still looking for ways to trim government spending, he should cast a cold eye on the busy bodies who make up the provincial censor board (officially known as the Amusements Regulation Board). While departments like health and education suffer cuts, the censor board, which already churns through tax dollars at a $420,000 annual clip, has pulled off an empire-building coup that will double its budget, impose new, hidden, discriminatory taxes, and damage the most worthwhile and fragile elements of the industry it is empowered to regulate. The censor board's job is to tell grown-up Nova Scotians which films they can and cannot watch, and to classify the former as to levels of sex, violence, nudity and profanity. Whatever one's view of censorship, there is an argument for this second function. A general rating serves to warn discerning filmgoers that their loved ones may be subjected to two hours of treacly cotton batten. But why must Nova Scotia conduct its own ratings? Are standards here that different from those in Ontario or Saskatchewan? For years, New Brunswick and P.E.I. cribbed ratings from our censor board. They got the desired consumer info; we footed the bill. Under the guise of righting that imbalance, Nova Scotia's censorship czars have devised an ambitious power-and-money grab. This year, all three Maritime Provinces will establish a regional censorship agency, the Maritime Classification Board. The board will be ``self-financing.'' This doesn't mean it will be financed out of the $15-to-20 million in sales tax paid annually by Nova Scotians renting videos. It means a new tax will apply to every film and video title distributed in the region. Distributors will pay $1.75 per minute to have films rated, unless censors reject the film or deem it to contain ``explicit material,'' in which case the charge will be $4.00 per minute. A distributor won't know which rate applies until the rating takes place, giving the board a financial stake in its censors' decisions. Last year, the Nova Scotia censor board rated 3,014 movie titles, of which about 65 percent received ``explicit'' ratings, according to Michele McKinnon, publicist for the Department of Housing and Consumer Affairs. If those figures hold up, and if we assume an average of 100 minutes per film, revenue will total almost $1 million. In short, the board's budget will more than double overnight. You can gauge the quality of thinking behind this bureaucratic maneuver by looking at who's annoyed and who's not. The major Hollywood studios and distribution companies couldn't care less. A distributor might ship 20,000 copies of a blockbuster new release to the region. Assuming 100 minutes at $1.75 per minute, the cost comes to less than a penny per copy. Surprisingly, the largest distributor of erotic films in Nova Scotia isn't too worked up either. Ely Mire, proprietor of Vidio X 4 of Montreal, says he wouldn't mind the $4 fee if he was getting anything in return. Specifically, he'd like a system like the ones in Quebec and British Columbia, where numbered stickers and regular inspections prevent bootleggers from renting illegal copies of films his company paid to have rated. He won't get it. This is purely a tax grab. Distributors of so-called B movies will be hit even harder. B movies are obscure titles produced by independent studios. They include many wonderful films, but they aren't huge box office draws. Instead of selling multiple copies of a few titles, as the major producers do, B movie distributors sell a few copies each of many titles. They will get hammered by the Savage government's movie tax grab. One Ontario B Movie distributor told the Chronicle-Herald that a single, $900 sale to one Nova Scotia company would have cost $8,730 to rate under the new system, based on selling two copies each of 50 titles. So expect even less variety at video stores from now on. Now consider the impact on Wormwood's Cinema of Halifax, Nova Scotia's only art movie theatre. Later this month, Wormwood's will show an acclaimed documentary about Leni Riefenstahl, the Nazi film propagandist. The film lasts 182 minutes. Assuming a non-offensive rating, it will cost $318.50 to classify. The distributor, Libra Films of Toronto, gets 40 per of Wormwood's gross. Wormwood's charges members $3.50 admission. Manager Peter Gaskin says he would be ecstatic if 75 people showed up for each of four planned screenings. So the most Libra can expect is $420, of which the censor board will take $318.50 for the ``service'' of determining whether this historic film offends delicate Nova Scotia sensibilities. Gaskin expects the new policy to eliminate 10 to 15 percent of the films he would like to show. Bob Brown, proprietor of Light and Shadows, an art video rental outlet that caters to the university community in Wolfville, expects it to put him out of business. He stocks titles like operas, and the six-hour Masterpiece Theatre production of John le Carre's (ITALIC) A Perfect Spy. (ROMAN) When confronted with the economic consequences of this tax grab, Housing and Consumer Affairs Minister Guy Brown couldn't resist striking the cheap pose of an anti-porn crusader. ``It (the discriminatory fees) will create problems for films that shouldn't be here,'' he bragged to Daily News video critic Ian Johnston. Although no legislation has been passed, the new tax goes into effect tomorrow. Brown and McKinnon say the censor board will consider exemptions on a case-by-case basis, though they offer no criteria for these decisions. Thus the censors' power grows ever more arbitrary. What alternative is there? If we must have film ratings (and after all, we don't have book or magazine ratings), why not require distributors to use Ontario or Quebec ratings? In other words, do what P.E.I. and New Brunswick did to us for the last 20 years, with no noticeable deterioration in the public morals of those two provinces. That would give us timely consumer ratings, at zero cost to the taxpayer, and zero cost to the movie-going and video-renting public. But of course, it would deny Guy Brown the chance to posture as an anti-porn moralist. Come to think of it, that would be a plus too. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright (c) 1994 by Parker Barss Donham. All rights reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- * To post comments to all Parker-L subscribers, send an e-mail message to: Parker-L@nstn.ns.ca -- Parker Barss Donham | R.R. 1, Bras d'Or, | (902) 674-2953 (vox) pdonham@fox.nstn.ns.ca | N.S., Canada B0C-1B0 | (902) 674-2994 (fax) ============= end of repost ==== - Carl -- Carl Kadie -- I do not represent EFF; this is just me. =kadie@eff.org, kadie@cs.uiuc.edu =