If you've got a Canadian passport, you might as well fit yourself for an eyepatch and tricorn hat. The Americans have lately been crowing that we're a band of content pirates, but Hollywood can help itself by doing business with iTunes Canada and providing a library of legal content to download. That, and some stronger legislation from Ottawa, would go a long way to keeping us honest.

Back in November, Cineplex Entertainment president and CEO Ellis Jacob got a missive from an old friend, Fox head of distribution Bruce Snyder, threatening to pull product if camcordering in Montreal theaters wasn't dealt with. Then, on March 2, another letter went to Stephen Harper (cc'ing Heritage Minister Bev Oda and Justice Minister Robert Nicholson), this time courtesy of a couple of U.S. senators from California and Texas, calling the P.M.'s attention to the dramatic increase of movie piracy that has occurred in Canada since the United States enacted tougher laws and penalties.

Wait until Tinseltown gets its eyeballs on a recent study from Toronto market research firm Advanis. Based on a survey polling wired Canadians in February, we not only bootleg directly from the screen, but we also like to download pirated booty - a lot. A whopping 93% of those downloading movies in this country are doing so illegally. And it's not just tech-savvy teenagers. Nearly 50% are over age 46.

This runs contrary to the image of the polite Canuck who apologizes to the bank machine for charging him to take out his own money. Various theories have been put forward claiming to debunk the Canadian pirate allegations, but what's the truth?

There is evidence that Snyder was misquoted when he said 50% of all bootleg copies originate in Canada. The more accurate number is 20% to 30%, according to Jacob, who notes the higher figure references a distinct period of time in 2006, not the average.

Nonetheless, Jacob has tried everything from night goggles to full-scale wanding of theater patrons to satisfy the American studios. "It's an entertainment experience," he says. "You're not flying on an airplane, for crying out loud. We don't want to turn [theaters] into armed camps."

And then there's the argument that most people don't want to watch crummy videos shot by a guy hiding a camera in a popcorn box, anyway. "Police did a raid recently at the Pacific Mall [near Toronto] and found 200,000 Harry Potter DVDs," says Jacob. "There are lots of people who will buy [bootleg DVDs] for five dollars."

Are there? This raises the question: How much money are these poor quality videos really costing the Canadian movie industry? Advantis pegs the cost of piracy at an estimated $173 million per year, but we don't know how much is linked to camcordering. And pinning it on in-theater theft seems to fly in the face of a 2003 study done by AT&T, which concluded that Hollywood was prone to insider attacks, which resulted in leaked screener copies of 77% of 312 movies studied.