Canada is joining Russia and China as one of the global leaders of U.S. copyright violation, a watchdog group said. Canada was criticized for not amending its copyright laws and for not strengthening anti-piracy enforcement.
Digital Journal — This isn’t the kind of company Canada wants to keep: Canada is one of the biggest violators of U.S. copyright law, according to U.S.-based International Intellectual Property Alliance.
In a recent report (opens in PDF), the IIPA provided a laundry list of problems associated with Canada and copyright infringement.
In 2007, the Entertainment Software Association found numerous piracy operations in Alberta, British Columbia, and Ontario; file-swapping in Canada is booming, and the estimated number of unauthorized downloads (1.3 billion) swamps the number of legitimate downloads (20 million) by a factor of 65:1; and the report stated “Canada’s outmoded copyright law contains no criminal prohibitions on the manufacture or distribution of devices (such as mod chips and the like) whose only plausible use is to circumvent technological protection measures used by copyright owners to fight piracy.”
The report elaborated on Canada’s soft stance on battling piracy:
Canada has taken no meaningful steps toward modernizing its copyright law to meet the minimum global standards of the WIPO internet treaties, which it signed more than a decade ago.
The IIPA report recommended that Canadian border officials act more vigilantly against piracy criminals. The group is calling for a nationwide program to crack down on illegal imported goods at all points of entry:
Raids and seizures against retail targets, as well as against the manufacturers of pirate products, must be stepped up. Since the availability of pirated products will not be reduced without criminal prosecutions against infringers and the imposition of deterrent sentences, Crown counsel should be encouraged to take on more copyright infringement cases, and be provided with the training and other support needed to fully prosecute them.
The IIPA, representing the copyright interests of 1,900 U.S. companies, estimated the U.S. lost more than $18 billion in trade through copyright piracy in 2007, up 20 per cent a year earlier.
And the group says Canada contributed about $511 million of that loss, while China led the list of violators with a $2.9 billion contribution.
