Warner Bros. studio has decided to cancel all advance promotional and word-of-mouth screenings in Canada, including for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Canada's reputation as the high seas of movie piracy has the federal government considering a move to make camcorders in theatres a crime.

"Our government is aware of the problem of piracy and the role of camcording in contributing to that problem," Heritage Minister Bev Oda said yesterday. "I am currently working with my colleague the minister of justice on measures to address this issue."

An interdepartmental working group is already considering an amendment to the Criminal Code as one way to stop the practice, a Canadian Heritage official says.

Unlike the U.S., Canada has nothing in its Criminal Code to combat camcording of movies in theatres.

And at least one behemoth American studio wants Canadians to do know about it.

Warner Bros. yesterday mounted a press campaign here, claiming our country has become a hotbed of movie bootlegging. The studio claims 70% of all its films released over the past 18 months have been taped in Canada.

As a result, Warner Bros. has cancelled all advance promotional and word-of-mouth screenings in Canada, starting with Ocean's Thirteen in June and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in July.

Other Hollywood studios are expected to follow suit.

Dianne Schwalm, senior vice-president of theatrical marketing for Warner Bros. in Canada, said the camcording problem is industry-wide. For the past two years, Warner Bros. Canada has been working with the Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association (CMPDA) in lobbying the federal government to make the act of camcording a punishable offence.

"We have to be more proactive about making the government aware of the reality and the global impact of piracy," Schwalm said. "Right now, if someone is caught camcording a movie, there are no real legal ramifications."

Because every print of every movie made carries special watermark identification, studio officials now know exactly where the camcording is taking place -- right down to the specific movie theatre in the specific town.

Alberta and Quebec appear to be hotbeds of camcording crime.

"But nobody can be charged," Schwalm said. "It's the perfect-crime scenario."

And it's a serious and organized crime scenario, according to Doug Frith, president of the CMPDA.

This is not a case of amateurs picking up a few dodgy dollars. Frith says film duplication is big business -- on a global scale.

NDP heritage critic Charlie Angus agrees there is an issue, but wonders if this is also a bit of the old blame-Canada game.

"There's been a kind of a concerted campaign to paint Canada as some kind of pariah," Angus said. "That's simply not true."