Canada and Spain labeled the worst of the pirate havens
Piracy is out of control and ruining the world as we know it, or at least ruining the business models of the anally retentive entertainment industry.
So the solution – pick out a bunch of countries that don’t want to play ball with the US entertainment big boys and put them on a list of the worst countries for not fighting against piracy.
On that list is my own country of Canada as well as Spain, who by the way just passed some of the most far reaching anti-piracy legislation in Europe.
“The sky-high Internet piracy levels in Spain can be attributed to government policies that have created an Internet-wide safe harbor for infringing activities. Spanish enforcement authorities have established the de facto decriminalization of illegal downloading of content distributed via P2P file-sharing,” they argue.
Another issue that should be resolved is the lack of ability to identify and report copyright infringers. “Spain’s laws fail to meet the minimum requirements of the EU E-Commerce Directive regarding liability for ISPs, or to establish the necessary tools to obtain the identity of the direct infringer,” the groups add.
Aside from Spain, Canada is another candidate for the 2011 priority watch list. In a statement RIAA’s Neil Turkewitz specifically mentioned Canada’s slow progress on revising their copyright law..
“The Canadian Government has inexplicably consumed yet another year without modernizing its copyright regime, leaving a legal structure in place that is not adequate to respond to present challenges,” Turkewitz said.
The claimed result is that Canada is now one of the world’s true pirate havens. In their advice to the US Trade Representative RIAA and IIPA write the following.
“Canada is home to some of the world’s most popular illegitimate Internet sites, including illegitimate P2P download and streaming sites.”
I guess this explains why a lot of Canadian politicians are seeing a nice influx of contributions to their re-election campaigns from Canadian fronted lobbyists in the payroll of US entertainment companies.
