Piracy and ambassadorial stats
p2pnet.net news view:- Here’s a comparison that is really interesting.
The US Ambassador to Canada, David Wilkins, says that CDN IP piracy may be costing the Canadian economy up to $30 Billion a year. (Let’s modestly assume that’s CDN dollars). On March 1, 2007, he told the Empire Club:
And we are working with the Canadian government now on that issue. We have met with Ministers Bernier and Oda and members of the Prime Minister’s staff and we are requesting a stronger copyright bill be introduced and be passed.
We are joined by the U.S. and Canadian motion picture and sound recording and computer software industries. Right now the copyright laws or the intellectual property right protection in Canada is considered the weakest of the G-7 countries. So we are asking that be strengthened.
And it really does cost the Canadian economy a huge amount every year. It is estimated to be from some $10 to $30 billion per year.
Yesterday, the CBC reported that Canadians spend about $21 billion a year on prescription drugs. This is the third highest per capita spending in the world, trailing only the USA and France. The CBC’s figures come from the Canadian Institute for Health Information and the OECD.
So – either Canadians engage in IP piracy that could be worth almost 50% more than their prescription drug expenditures – or the Ambassador’s numbers are way off. Perhaps by several degrees of magnitude?
Howard Knopf – Excess Copyright
[Knopf is an Ottawa-based copyright lawyer who's been lead counsel on legal challenges both at the Copyright Board and in the Courts against the excesses of the music industry establishment. He's regularly quoted in the mainstream media and acted against the CRIA in the file sharing litigation, and continues to act against the CPCC, in which the CRIA is still a major stakeholder, on the levy front.]
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the 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!
