p2pnet - rss feed: Canada in China WTO complaint
p2pnet.net news:- The Canadian government announced that it is joining the US World Trade Organization complaint against China over Chinese intellectual property protection.
Canada will be a “third party” in the complaint, which was launched earlier this month over China’s criminal statutes involving commercial-scale copyright infringement. The Department of Foreign Affairs claims that Canada’s participation is based on “concerns expressed by Canadian stakeholders on a range of issues related to China’s intellectual property rights regime.”
This is obviously nonsense. According to Statistics Canada, China only imported $13 million worth of Canadian culture goods or one-half of one percent of total Canadian culture goods exports.
In other words, the Chinese market for Canadian cultural goods is presently tiny. While it is certainly possible that copyright infringement is eating away at some Canadian exports (and that China is a source of counterfeit products that are sold in Canada), the transparent reality is that Canada has succumbed to U.S. pressure (see my BBC piece on the global US IP pressure) become the first country to join the US in the WTO complaint. The European Union immediately rejected the possibility of joining the complaint, presumably leaving the US looking for other partners in its latest attempt at coalition building.
With the continuing US pressure on Canada on the intellectual property front, this was likely viewed as an easy way to curry favour with the US (with the “only” cost being a continuing degeneration of Canada-China trade relations). The irony is that the USTR Special 301 report, due within days, will hold the prospect of US trade sanctions against Canada for its own intellectual property protection framework.
Sources say that both the European Union (reversing an earlier statement) and Japan will also be joining the WTO complaint.
Michael Geist
[Geist is the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. He can be reached by email at mgeist[at]uottawa.ca and is on-line at www.michaelgeist.ca.]
Also See:
sneaky DRM - ‘Sony movies won’t play …’ , April 16, 2007
If your Net access is blocked by governBryan Adams slams Net radio hikement restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at thIs the endSurvey: How Did Copyright Infringement Become Equated with Robbery? (of the Net) nigh?zze University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
April 26th, 2007 at 11:55 am
Great, an example of biting the hand that feeds you. China holds power over other countries simply because the cast majority of commercial products are made there. You want to complain about our piracy? Bye-bye manufacturing. Sure they could move it all to Viewnam or somewhere else,