Canada placed on copyright blacklist

[Boeman]

PAUL KORING

Globe and Mail Update

April 30, 2009 at 3:56 PM EDT

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration added Canada Thursday to a notorious blacklist of countries where Internet piracy flourishes, reflecting a new, tougher line in Washington over the Harper government's chronic failure to deliver on promises of new copyright laws.

“Canada has never been put on the priority watch list before,” said Stanford McCoy, assistant U.S. trade representative for intellectual property and innovation as he released Washington's annual report or offenders.

Canada now joins a group of countries designated as being especially lax in protecting intellectual property, including Algeria, China, Russia, Pakistan, Indonesia and Venezuela. No other advanced Western democracy is on the list and Canada is regarded as a lawless hub for bootleg movies, ripped-off software and pirated chips that bypass copyright protections.

“The decision was not an easy one but we believed that high standards are appropriate in Canada,” Mr. McCoy said. It was clear that Washington's patience with Ottawa's repeatedly broken promises has run out, perhaps also a reflection of the greater status and power of the digital and entertainment sectors in the era of the net-savvy Obama administration.

Ron Kirk

'This administration will protect American innovations and creativity by negotiating and enforcing strong and effective intellectual property protections,' U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said this week.

“We would like to see them follow through on that commitment,” Mr. McCoy said, referring to a succession of unfulfilled Throne speech promises that new copyright law would be forthcoming.

‘The United States continues to have serious concerns with Canada's failure to accede to and implement the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) Internet treaties which Canada signed in 1997,” the report said.

For years, the powerful International Intellectual Property Alliance – a group that includes companies such as Microsoft Corp., Apple Inc. and Paramount Pictures Corp. – pressed the previous Bush administration to get tough with what it regarded as Canada's chronic failure to enforce intellectual property laws. But the Bush administration was content to leave Canada among the larger and less-serious group of offenders on the ordinary watch list.

The alliance cheered Canada's blacklisting Thursday. “We commend [the U.S. Trade Representative] for the decision to elevate Canada to the priority watch list,” it said. “Canada remains woefully behind the rest of the developed world (and many countries in the developing world as well) in adopting critical legislation that will facilitate the development of a healthy online marketplace for copyright materials,” said Eric Smith, an alliance spokesman.

“More than a decade has passed since the global community agreed to two international treaties providing minimum standards for protecting copyright in the digital age, but Canada has yet to join these treaties or to implement their obligations in domestic law.”

This week, Trade Minister Stockwell Day warned that the blacklist was coming.

Whether U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk gave Mr. Day a last chance to stay off the list remains unclear.

“They talked about the situation but I can't say that there were any particular commitments,” Mr. McCoy said Thursday.

President Barack Obama has signalled he intends to take a much harder stance with offenders who are lax about Internet piracy and fail to protect copyright.

“In the President's trade policy agenda, we noted that this administration will protect American innovations and creativity by negotiating and enforcing strong and effective intellectual property protections,” Mr. Kirk said this week.

Washington also wants Canada to put an end to the flow of pirated and counterfeit movies and DVDs that cross its porous borders. In particular, Washington wants Canadian customs officers to be given the authority to seize pirated materials rather than have to seek a court order each time they suspect a shipment. The flow of pirated and counterfeit material not only enters Canada from abroad but much of it winds up crossing into the United States.

“Canada's weak border measures continue to be a serious concern for intellectual property owners,” said the annual report issued Thursday by the U.S. Trade Representative.

Canada was singled out and is “being elevated to the priority watch list for the first time, reflecting increasing concern about the continuing need for copyright reform as well as continuing concern about weak border enforcement,” the report said.

Mr. Kirk said “even our closest allies and neighbours such as Canada” must understand that failure to protect intellectual property poses a threat to “one of America's great strengths in the global economy, our innovation and creativity.”

Thursday's blacklisting over Canada's lax copyright laws is only the latest shot in a swelling trans-border crossfire.

It was all quiet on the trade front when the year began, but the arrival of President Barrack Obama changed that. The new president's “Buy America” restrictions in his country's massive stimulus package sent shudders through Canadian manufacturers, the long-dormant softwood lumber dispute has been rekindled and then Ottawa announced it was hauling the United States off to the World Trade Organization in a nasty spat over new food labelling requirements that could throttle Canada's hog and cattle exports.

And

The Absurdity of the USTR's Blame Canada Approach

Thursday April 30, 2009

The IIPA, the lead U.S. lobbyist on international IP matters, has issued a press release on the USTR Special 301 report, welcoming the inclusion of Canada on the Priority Watch List. Yet the release inadvertently demonstrates why the designation is so absurd. Included at the end are the estimated software piracy percentages for each country on the list. While the BSA claims are themselves subject to challenge, compare Canada to the remainder of the list. Canada comes in at 32%. The remaining countries (no rates are listed for Algeria, Israel, or Venezuela):

Country

BSA Claimed Piracy Rate

Argentina

75%

Chile

66%

India

66%

Indonesia

86%

Pakistan

85%

China

79%

Russia

70%

Thailand

76%

Not only is Canada not even remotely close to any other country on the list, it has the lowest software piracy rate of any of the 46 countries in the entire Special 301 Report. Moreover, it is compliant with its international IP obligations, participates in ACTA, has prosecuted illegal camcording, has the RCMP prioritizing IP matters, has statutory damages provisions, features far more copyright collectives than the U.S., and has a more restrictive fair dealing/fair use provision.

One can only wonder; will the US place itself on its own blacklist? Or is this simply the opening phase in the fulfillment of Manifest Destiny with the invasion of Canada in search of gadgets of mass proliferation?

[Bigduke6]

It's all sort of shell game. A couple of examples that I know - several years back Bulgaria was supposedly an awful hub of software bootlegging, more recently it was Ukraine. Since then both places have "cracked down" on the practice. This has not pushed the bootlegged materials off the streets. Rather, it has forced the bootleggers to comply with local anti-piracy rules, basically that every CD on sale has to have a government sticker certifying the CD is legit.

Supposedly the government stickers are numbered, impossible to duplicate, and the government agency enforcing the sticker system keeps good records and can't be corrupted.

But of course this is not only places like Bulgaria and Ukraine we're talking about, but software pirates from those countries that we're talking about.

It may not come as a shock that, the Bulgarian and Ukrainian bootleggers, already skilled at manufacturing CDs identical to the legitimate original, learned very quickly to conterfeit the government certification stickers.

And that's only the beginning. Since the government officials in both countries are poorly paid, enforcement is problematic at the outset. Then there is the nature of CD retail in both countries. This is not the West where you buy CDs in a shopping mall store or some major retailer likw Walmart, either of which are relatively easy for the government to track.

This is East Europe, and a massive portion of goods are retailed in open air markets, city squares, or kiosks not necessarily registered anywhere. The only way to keep track of all this retail chaos is by government inspectors checking each individual CD of each individual trader, often enough so that the trader can't slip in faked legal CDs into his inventory and sell them before the government inspector comes back.

And that is assuming that the government inspector can't just be bought off which, seeing as he makes about $200 - 300 a month and pays the same food prices that Microsoft employees pay, is a pretty iffy proposition. Usually Ukrainian and Bulgarian intellectual property inspectors are so poor, their first priority is feeding their children and paying the utility bill, and frankly, people like that feel little compulsion to protect the property rights of the likes of Bill Gates or Paramount Pictures.

This is all never mind what a substantial subset of software users in those countries do, which is just upload what they need from one USB flash to another, or off Bittorrent, or whatever. I would say for sure the average software user in Bulgaria or Ukraine is more able to deal with crack coding on a disc, or just hunt down and download the software he wants off a pirate site, than a similar user in the West by an order of magnitude.

People like this, Bulgarians or Ukrainians interested in tracking down some software, they have the free time, they have the skill, and the cost of legitimate software is prohibative. A copy of legal Photoshop in Ukraine costs close to $1,000; that's four months' salary. So to put the relative costs in US terms, ask yourself, how energetic would US software users be at finding illegal versions of Photoshop, if the legal version retailed for $15,000 a pop?

But the US intellectual property people don't think that deeply. The government people get pressured by the big entertainment and software manufacturers, and the government people pressure countries like Bulgaria and Ukraine to "comply." So countries liike Bulgaria and Ukraine make laws saying every CD has to have a legitimacy sticker, and each sticker needs to be individually tracked and noted in a register somewhere - but of course the US government people don't get access to the Bulgarian and Ukrainian registers, nor would they be likely to understand them if they did.

Sooo, what you get is flunkies from the US embassy working for Commerce going to the bootleg CD centers, they buy some CDs, and then they try and run the ID numbers past the Bulgarian or Ukrainian government. The answer comes back, eventually, "Oh sure, definately, that was a legitmate lot of CDs, those numbers check out."

So then the Commerce people turn around, and tell Microsoft "See, Bulgaria and Ukraine got their acts together, we told them to track every CD with certification stickers, and they do. We ask them to check out the certification stickers, and they do. Problem solved!"

It isn't of course. Bootlegging is alive and well in Bulgaria and Ukraine, it's out in the open, it's massive, and it can't be stopped.

But it's much easier for the US Department of Commerce to pretend the problem is fixed and point the finger at Canada, than to admit trying to put the squeeze on Ukraine and Bulgaria was a big fat waste of time.

I suspect the point to the whole exercise may well be that Microsoft and its friends don't want the US consumer figuring out what the East Europeans and Asians already have: the worldwide web is so big, and finding software is so easy, and printing your own CDs so simple, that only a ignorant fool would choose to pay someone like Microsoft - by many standards a classic monopoly - full price for its arguably ridiculously overpriced products.

One thing is for sure, the anti-intellectual piracy campaign so far is a failure, and for the forseeable future, it really looks like smooth sailing for the pirates. No matter what Stephen Spielberg wants.

[Other Means]

I remember reading that in China Linux wasn't catching on because it came on 2 disks and so was more expensive than Windows.

No way it can be stopped.

[Boeman]

I remember reading that in China Linux wasn't catching on because it came on 2 disks and so was more expensive than Windows.

No way it can be stopped.

Wasn't there a push by Microsoft to institute a hardware DRM model a few years ago to finally "make the Chinese pay for their software" as they put it? Whatever happened to that program?

[JonS]

Whatever happened to that program?

I don't know, but since the Chinese make all the hardware anyway, what would be your guess?

[Mikko_I]

Beh, any DRM is only likely to harm legal users anyway. Here’s why:

“DRM systems are usually broken in minutes, sometimes days. Rarely, months. It's not because the people who think them up are stupid. It's not because the people who break them are smart. It's not because there's a flaw in the algorithms. At the end of the day, all DRM systems share a common vulnerability: they provide their attackers with ciphertext, the cipher and the key. At this point, the secret isn't a secret anymore.”

- Cory Doctorow, Content

(Fat change that M$ is going to realize that though...)

[dieseltaylor]

Copyright has been abused by its extension at the behest of American media companies. Genuine inventions get less protection than sodding music and literature.

[Stalins Organ]

Cue arguments about hemp being made illegal in the late 30's to protect the synthetic fibre industry.....

[Tactical Wargamer]

And

One can only wonder; will the US place itself on its own blacklist? Or is this simply the opening phase in the fulfillment of Manifest Destiny with the invasion of Canada in search of gadgets of mass proliferation?

Please do invade. Sick of the super high taxes we pay.....oh ya we have free health care. Or should I say rationed health care

[huhr]

RCMP

Great Statement!!

Please do invade. Sick of the super high taxes we pay.....oh ya we have free health care. Or should I say rationed health care

[Tomb]

its not that simple

the last two attempts to invade Canada the US made, the US were defeated both times

[Stalins Organ]

I think a few things have changed since then......

[Tomb]

yup they sure have..canada was a bit too big, something smaller needed...korea will do...hmm a draw thier..something smaller perhaps...Vietnam...nope that was a loss..smaller still panama....a pinprick of a country not even enough for a really big city...yeah victory at last.

i have a theory on that

the US does not seem to realise its not the size of the dog in the fight that matters (and the US is a big dog..no doubt about it)

Its the size of the fight in the dog that counts (and as a nation, for the US that is very questionable at times)

So apart from weapons tech moving on has anything really changed

the decisive factor is the will to win

who do you think has the greater will to win in Afganistan ?

the Taliban or the US ?

the US and its allies can and do pound the taliban (or whatever they were or are called next) into the dirt every day...

as have many nations and empires over hundreds of years

yet they keep on going

that is the will to win

and it will be decisive.

has that changed since the US invaded Canada last ?

[dieseltaylor]

This is an interesting article on what is happening in Afghanistan and why it costs roughly a million a year to keep a soldier there:

http://www.alternet.org/world/147696/why_we%27re_bound_to_fail_in_afghanistan%3A_what_happened_when_i_spent_2_weeks_at_a_u.s._military_base/?page=entire

[ASL Veteran]

So a US invasion of Canada would be more like a nation building exercise. The US military would be liberating the Canadian population from an oppressive government while fighting off a powerful communist insurgency?

[Stalins Organ]

I think he would prefer something that might actually succeed......

[Michael Emrys]

Why don't we just build Disneylands all over Canada and let nature take it's course?

Michael

[dieseltaylor]

Funnily enough I can see the US right-wingers seeing this as a plot to bring 20 million lefties onto the electoral role. Or is it more a Puerto Rico thing?

I will always maintain that the American secession was an error. How many WW's do think there would have been if the Commonwealth had included all of North America? I just cannot see any country wishing to take on a global commonwealth which has more resources, gdp, and effective manpower. Pax Britannica indeed.

[Michael Emrys]

Canada can rack up one more invasion repelled:

http://fwix.com/victoria/share/2c588525cd/officials_close_bc_border_crossing_to_us

Michael

[Stalins Organ]

I will always maintain that the American secession was an error. How many WW's do think there would have been if the Commonwealth had included all of North America? I just cannot see any country wishing to take on a global commonwealth which has more resources, gdp, and effective manpower. Pax Britannica indeed.

Yeah but then think of all those bears that wouldn't have the right to be harmed.....or something like that.....