Canada targeted by the IIPA. Again.
p2pnet view P2P | Politics:- “The IIPA has published its usual criticism of Canada, but buried within the submission is a preliminary report that Canada’s business software piracy rate has declined yet again”, blogged Michael Geist recently. “The report indicates there is a 2% to decline, to 30%, a record low.”
However, says Digital Copyright Canada’s Russell McOrmond in a comment, “I realise why you use their own statistics against them, but we have to be careful not to lend them any credibility.”
He goes on, “The reality is that their methodologies don’t differentiate between infringement and lawful market trends including market failures and people switching to legal alternatives to BSA member software.
“I suspect that out of those three the least significant or changing factor in the past decade has been infringement, with the error in their statistics easily being larger than the actual rate of infringement.”
Our ‘regrettable but well-deserved reputation’
Almost exactly a year ago, “Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper and US president Barack Obama are scheduled for a sit-down tomorrow and according to the Toronto Star, with Obama will be, ‘a raft of his most powerful political deputies’,” said p2pnet, going on >>>
The pow-wow will kick off with a “15-minute one-on-one meeting,” then a “restricted” meeting with senior officials, followed by a working lunch with officials, says CTV.
At the top of the agenda will be the worsening economic crisis and given that Hollywood and the Big 4 record labels claim world economies depend on them and their ‘product,’ will the double act of Tom Perrelli and Don Verrilli, two RIAA henchman who are now among those in charge of the US Department of Justice, be included in Obama’s entourage?
And if they are, will Canada’s, “regrettable but well-deserved reputation as a safe haven for Internet pirates” be included in topics for discussion?
According to entertainment industry’s International Intellectual Property Alliance(IIPA) ’special’ 301 ‘report,’ “A number of the world’s most notorious and prolific BitTorrent sites for online piracy are hosted or have operators based in Canada.”
Now, in its 2010 release Copyright Industries Urge Greater Global Protection of American Jobs and Exports Threatened by Piracy the IIPA recommends 10 countries be placed on the Priority Watch List in 2010″, the offending named as: Argentina, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, India, Indonesia, Mexico, People’s Republic of China, the Philippines and Russia.
‘Canada has taken no meaningful steps … ‘
The IIPA, short for International Intellectual Property Alliance, is another corporate entertainment industry front organisation with special ties to the US Trade Representative’s office, which often acts for, and in the interests of, Hollywood and the Big 4 organised music record labels.
BSA (Business Software Alliance) companies are also dues-paying members.
“Canada has taken no meaningful steps toward modernizing its copyright law to meet the global minimum standards of the WIPO Internet Treaties, which it signed more than a decade ago”, says the IIPA, also stating:
“The government’s top leaders acknowledged many of these deficiencies and announced their intention to reform the copyright law over three years ago. Yet today there is not even a reform bill pending in the Canadian parliament.”
Says McOrmond in Digital Copyright Canada >>>
The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) tipped their hand a bit in this years submission to the “Special 301″ report process. While they again attacked Canada for having strong copyright law that is different than the USA, the most telling was their opposition to policies encouraging legally free of charge Open Source in their submissions for Brazil, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Encouraging legally free software is by far the best policy instrument to reduce software copyright infringement for the less financially rich countries and individuals of the world. For the vast majority of the worlds population the only viable options are to infringe royalty-based software or switch to royalty-free alternatives. The fact the IIPA is encouraging countries to have policies which increase infringement rather than have people switch to competing software is telling about their actual goals.
“This is consistent with what past Microsoft business group president Jeff Raikes previously stated, “If they’re going to pirate somebody, we want it to be us rather than somebody else’,” he adds.
Raikes was, of course, merely parroting a statement originally made by Microsoft supremo Bill Gates .
As p2pnet reported back in 2004, Gates was talking to business school students at the University of Washington and was quoted in the the July 20, 1998, Fortune Magazine as saying:
“Although about three million computers get sold every year in China, people don’t pay for the software. Someday they will, though. And as long as they’re going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”
This is, of course, the next decade.
..… and identi.ca
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
Michael Geist – Canadian Software Piracy Rate Drops 2% To Record Low, February 19, 2010
Digital Copyright Canada – IIPA would rather people “pirate” than switch to legal competitors, February 21, 2010
p2pnet – TCPA | Palladium. The End? Or the Beginning?, 2004
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February 22nd, 2010 at 12:13 pm
“Although about three million computers get sold every year in China, people don’t pay for the software. Someday they will, though. And as long as they’re going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”
This is, of course, the next decade.
lol, pwned.
February 22nd, 2010 at 3:31 pm
Also in relation, and nicely worded, see this:
Perennial IIPA Blame Canada Litany
http://excesscopyright.blogspot.com/2010/02/perennial-iipa-blame-canada-litany.html
“The IIPA tells us how we should run our law enforcement agencies, operate our borders (by keeping Judges out of the seizure procedure because going to court is “unduly burdensome”) and generally using taxpayer resources to enforce their members’ private rights.” …
and this:
“We need a surge in IP enforcement activity”. Still more allusion to terrorism
http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2010/02/18/us-business-calls-for-ip-enforcement-%E2%80%9Csurge%E2%80%9D-seeks-new-legislation-this-year/
Also see the staged IP show put on in Canada by the US IIPA (see first link):
“One of the IIPA lawyers has recently appeared with a leading Canadian entertainment industry lawyer/lobbyist to stage faux-”debates” under the aegis of the the Canada Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center no less, which should be embarrassed at having provided such a blatant lobbying podium in both Toronto and Washington. These were not debates. They were duets.”
So, Jon, it is more than targeted, the US cartels and IIPA lawyers are now putting on staged propaganda shows here…
February 22nd, 2010 at 3:31 pm
blah, I’ve been put on spam hold.
February 22nd, 2010 at 4:26 pm
^^ Akismet automatically put posts with two or more links on hold.
Cheers!