13 Countries On US "Priority Watch List" For Copyright Piracy

hapworth writes "The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) has submitted a report on the top 40 countries guilty of piracy to The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), which is preparing for its annual 'Special 301' report. This report describes the adequacy and effectiveness of US trading partners' protection of intellectual property rights. Among the 40 countries suggested by the IIPA for the watch list, 13 were recommended for placement on the USTR's 'Priority Watch List.' These countries include Argentina, Canada, Chile, China, India, Indonesia, Russia, Costa Rica, the Philippines, Spain, Ukraine, and Vietnam. While previous reports have focused on physical piracy, this year's emphasizes cracking down on online piracy."

Comments

I'm sorry mr. Ballmer

[Anonymous Coward]

In my country Windows is counted among free software, you mad?

speaking as a Canadian to the USTR

[s4ltyd0g]

Phoque you eh?

Re:speaking as a Canadian to the USTR

[Anonymous Coward]

As a Canadian, do you have any idea why Canadia ended up on the list? The rest I can understand, with the possible exception of Spain, but Canada? Really?

Canada is always included on their list of naughty countries. It's some trade association though, so take any of their claims with a mountain of salt.

As usual, Michael Geist's site is refreshingly informative.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3920/135/ "U.S. List Unfairly Tarnishes Canada's Digital Reputation" from 2009.

Re:speaking as a Canadian to the USTR

[Jeff DeMaagd]

This has been a running issue for a few years now. I think it's largely because they want to make an example of Canada to convince them to pass the Canadian version of the DMCA.

Re:speaking as a Canadian to the USTR

[hawkingradiation]

It is because we have legislation in the works (Bill C-32) that the US government, er music and film industry, thinks will help give them more money. So far, it is called the "DMCA of Canada" for good reason. i.e. restriction of breaking digital locks for any reason, and although the Conservative government says it is willing to make modifications based on the input of Canadians, basically it has ignored the input given last summer by thousands of Canadians through "Copyright Consultations" and is pushing ahead. The Liberals (not a swear word here) have proposed modifications such as an Internet levy to pay for artists, however almost none of the money that the CD-levy has actually not gone to the artists themselves. Here is the Bill, and not is is a lot longer and complex that the original law that we have to today. Our Heritage Minister branded us as "not wanting to modernize Canadian law", because most Canadians who know about the law know that it does not need changing. In fact parts of the Canadian government seem to go lock-step with their US counterparts, with both Prentice (former Industry Minister) and Clement (current Industry Minister) being sent to the US to meet with US government officials about this law as one of the first things they have done when they took office. So to the US who is helping to introduce a law that most Canadians feel is unnecessary: "Go shove it".

Re:speaking as a Canadian to the USTR

[techno_dan]

I ignore the US on these and many world issues, because they only complain when Oil or money is involved, and only pass laws that increase profit for the few. Since money controls the US government, profit is God, and they will never allow fair use. In Canada, I buy any media, and I can break the encryption so that I can make backups, and also place them on my media server. I never give to others. At the same time, when a new CD comes out, I download some songs for free, and if I like enough of them, then buy the cd. If not, they are deleted. Why, because it is very rare now to hear albums on the radio, and in no way will I pay big bucks for something that ends up having one good track and the rest junk. Some will say "buy individual songs". I would if they were in the lossless format I use. What the world should do, is totally ignore the US. If they stop selling to us, then it is there loss.

Re:speaking as a Canadian to the USTR

[hjf]

It's not about that, and here goes my usual rant again:

Companies DON'T GIVE A FUCK about countries like mine. We don't have itunes, netflix, lala, pandora, hulu, xbox live, nothing. We also don't have game stores (microsoft doesn't import the xbox 360 or games, so even if you have one, you can't buy games simply because there are no places to buy them). Blockbuster closed too.

Sony does import the PS3 (at USD 800) and games (2-3x the US price).

So in one hand we have a middle class, with money, willing to buy things. In the other hand we have 60-something investors which think we still live in trees and there is no market for their products, and decide just not to sell them, or a very small "luxury" market, like the PS3.

If companies one day decided to start selling their stuff, for a reasonable price, I know people will buy them. How do I know this? Because I have a comic book shop. My customers are mostly teenagers who want the latest Naruto episode, and can get it from free from the internet just hours after it's been released in Japan. We have a local Naruto edition (in paper I mean) and guess what? It sells out.

My dad's friend works at a BMW dealership. They sold all BMWs last year. There is even a waiting list!

I live in a city of 400,000 and I know there are at least 10 dvd rental stores, and even 1 bluray-only rental store. So much for poor people living in trees.

You know what the problem with piracy really is? People selling pirated movies in the street. That's the real problem, but movie studios can't do anything about them, because our government won't. And, you see, people selling pirated movies in the street or not, there are dvd rental stores doing just fine.

Re:speaking as a Canadian to the USTR

[PopeRatzo]

The US is on Canada's list of countries harboring war criminals (Bush).

That's a bit harsh. Anyway, everybody knows Bush wouldn't have been found competent to stand trial.

Where's the Homeland Cred

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the BSA, the "dollar losses" right here in the U.S. are highest overall. Why didn't we make it on to our own list?

HAHAHAHAHAHA

[Hojima]

I remember watching a show on knock-off goods sold in China. Some spokesman for Gucci was talking about how they recently made a bust on counterfeit goods and how they potentially earned the company hundreds of thousands of dollars. I couldn't help but laugh at how out-of-touch this dumb-ass was. Does he think honestly think that the country's peasants (who make a big deal out of eating steak with their rice) would save up to buy an authentic Gucci handbag? Similarly, how fucking stupid do you have to be to think that you can stop them from saving money on software. Because that's how they look at it. There are two alternatives in their eyes: free pirated software, and free non-pirated software. No one is going to give two shits about Microsoft's poor employees.

Basically

[pizzach]

The US is pointing out countries that are most likely consume English content and don't 100% accept US international copyright laws. Mind how I prefixed international copyright laws with US because they are US laws forced on other countries.

Re:Basically

[starfishsystems]

Well said!

For a country founded on the concept of "no taxation without representation", the US shows remarkably consistent disregard for the laws of other nations, even when it comes to the basic matter of sovereign self governance. What certain US lobbyists in their wilful ignorance call "copyright piracy" may well be what our laws have been careful to designate as "fair use".

For example, in Canada we pay a levy on blank media. The recording industry insisted on this as compensation for the possibility that such media might be used, not to make original art or to perform filesystem backups, but to record copyrighted material. The government agreed, and consumers paid. Offer, acceptance, exchange of consideration. In this country, that's called a contract. And it's binding. Government and consumers have kept their part of the bargain. Now the industry can keep its.

And if the US counterpart of that industry isn't happy about this state of affairs, well boo fucking hoo. Its shortsightedness and greed is not our problem to solve.

And...

[kyrio]

Not a single fuck was given.

National Pride

[mdielmann]

I'm personally proud to see that my country is on the copyright watch list of a country with one of the most broken copyright laws in the world.

But as a Ccanadian

[future assassin]

I pay a levy to the artists for the privilege of music piracy. Whether the artists get the money after wards, not my problem. Thank you, come again.

  If you want to help stop piracy only download CC licensed music from site like http://www.ektoplazm.com/

The list is malformed

[DoofusOfDeath]

An accurate list of piracy must consider theft from the public domain, and robbing future generations of freedom to use their cultural heritage as they see fit.

The USA is #1 on that list.

To get off that list, the US should extradite all MPAA and RIAA to the Hague, as well as those U.S. Congressmen and Presidents who bought by copyright extremists.

Re:What about America?

[PopeRatzo]

Why isn't the US on this list?

Come on, lads, we're not trying hard enough!

USA! USA!

Human Trafficking

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

I ignore the US on these and many world issues, because they only complain when Oil or money is involved, and only pass laws that increase profit for the few.

Not true; those issues--and complaining, for that matter--just get more press. We put out a watch list for human trafficking, too, as part of the annual Trafficking in Persons Report. (Google it, or look at River of Innocents for a good primer on the issue).

The US does care about money and oil, of course--money and oil pay for everything and make everything work, and we want things to work and influential donors care about those things, so so does the government. But those aren't the only things we care about. The Global Health Initiatives, for example, have tremendously increased the quality of life for hundreds of millions of people, yet they rarely make it into the news. For some reason it's not as sexy to prevent Malaria as it is to do another story on Charlie Sheen.

Original author a IIRPA mouthpiece

[SuperDuck]

If the author of TFA had bothered to do any of his own independent research, he would have found that ISOhunt is *NOT* a cyberlocker, but a specialized search engine. Torrents != file storage.

The only reason us Canadians made the list is because of the previously mentioned reasons of our lack of DMCA-style legislation, and our "copyright" levy on digital media, which allows us far more fair-use of our purchased digital wares than the country that purports to allow fair use.

The U.S. can "Special 301" us all they want, but with our current government (what with Minister Tony Clement siding with consumers on denying Usage-Based Billing for wholesale accounts, and examining the larger UBB issue for consumer accounts), and the many public hearings on our "DMCA" legislation, I don't think the US FTR is going to hold much sway over our internal priorities.

Professor Michael Geist and Openmedia.CA FTW! :-)

Re:The frozen north....

[grub]

Because our current laws and privacy regulations don't allow the MPAA and RIAA to send their jackbooted hire-a-thugs across the border to bother us.

The US lawmakers and lobbyists (one in the same, really) are trying to force their shit down our throat.