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.

Comments

Re:Good

[Straif]

The main reason we get away with a lot of piracy is that we introduced the blank media tax in 1997. At the time that meant that almost any storage media that could possibly used to store MP3s/Video had some charge placed on it that was paid to the various rights holders. Essentially the various interested parties surrendered some of their ability to go after violators so that they could get a steady paycheck. It wasn't like Canada was some piracy utopia, they just found an alternative method to get paid and were happy to settle for that.

Cut to today where most people don't even use the taxable media anymore and those paychecks are getting smaller and smaller. The rights holders have fought for years to extend the tax to other devices (like MP3 players and smartphones) and have sometimes won but usually lost or been overturned so now they're just going to make noise. They've been talking about trying to remove the tax so that they can go after individuals much like in the US.