Slashdot Mirror
Canada Remains a 'Safe Haven' For Online Piracy, Rightsholders Claim (torrentfreak.com)
The MPAA, RIAA and other entertainment industry groups are calling out Canada, claiming that it remains a "safe haven" for copyright infringers and pirate sites, reports TorrentFreak. From the article: One of the main criticisms is that, despite having been called out repeatedly in the past, the country still offers a home to many pirate sites. "For a number of years, extending well into the current decade, Canada had a well-deserved reputation as a safe haven for some of the most massive and flagrant Internet sites dedicated to the online theft of copyright material," IIPA writes. Another disturbing development, according to IIPA, is the emergence of stand-alone BitTorrent applications that allow users to stream content directly through an attractive and user-friendly interface, hinting at Popcorn Time. In addition to the traditional pirate sites that remain in Canada, IIPA reports that several websites offering modified game console gear have also moved there in an attempt to escape liability under U.S. law.
We're all taxed on digital media (found guilty and sentenced regardless of whether we've actually committed an offense) so Canadian citizens tend to be a bit more blasé about benefiting from digital piracy. To us, it's not really piracy because we've paid. Maybe the **AA guys should have thought about that before lobbying successfully for the laws we ended up with.
After that, we have laws that say sharing unlicensed content is on the head of the person doing the sharing... and you actually have to prove the infringement.
So yeah, it's more difficult to stamp out pirate sites here because we expect due process and not **AA thugs wearing pseudo-police gear and issuing threatening letters that look like they're backed by the court system.