A Nation of Pirates?

The U.S. lists Canada as among the world's worst copyright offenders. It's an exaggeration that hurts the accusers more than the accused.

The United States generated international headlines last week by placing Canada on a “Priority Watch List” of countries that it claims are the world’s worst piracy offenders. While Canada had been included on a lower level “Watch List” for over a decade, the decision to group it together with China, Russia, Indonesia, and a host of other countries with high piracy rates in the annual Special 301 Report sent a signal that the U.S. intends to escalate the pressure on Canada to reform its copyright laws.

The inclusion of Canada on the Priority Watch List marks the successful culmination of years of aggressive lobbying from the U.S. movie, music, and software industries. Those lobby groups have regularly invoked a “Blame Canada” mantra in seeking to paint the country as a piracy haven.

The decision therefore yielded predictable lobbyist support from groups like the Motion Picture Association of America and the Canadian Recording Industry Association, whose President, Graham Henderson, said that Canada’s position on the list was “unfortunate and embarrassing.”

Yet the lobby group victory may ultimately prove illusory. Early indications are that many Canadians – particularly those not engaged in the copyright debate – view the U.S. claims with considerable skepticism. For example, National Post political columnist Don Martin responded to the claims by stating:

“That’s ridiculous. Anyone who has trolled the markets of other blacklist members such as Indonesia, Pakistan or China knows full well their very public piracy epidemic is simply not matched in Canada, the only Western country on the U.S. list.”

Martin’s instincts about the absurdity of claiming that the state of piracy in Canada is comparable to countries like China are borne out by the facts. The Business Software Alliance’s 2008 statistics show that among the eleven other countries on this year’s Priority Watch List for which data is available, the lowest rate of software piracy is 66 per cent. By comparison, Canada stands at 32 per cent, not remotely close to any other country on the list.

Similarly, 2008 data from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency on intellectual property seizures reports that China is the source of 81 per cent of all counterfeiting seizures. Canada does not even appear in the rankings of top source countries.

Canadian government officials have been trying to make much the same case for many years. In 2007, a senior official with the Department of Foreign Affairs told a House of Commons committee:

“Canada does not recognize the 301 Watch list process. It basically lacks reliable and objective analysis. It's driven entirely by U.S. industry. We have repeatedly raised this issue of the lack of objective analysis in the 301 Watch list process with our U.S. counterparts. I also recognize that the U.S. industry likes to compare anyone they have a problem with, concerning their IPR regime, to China and the other big violators, but we're not on the same scale. This is not the same thing.”

The U.S. has often used the Special 301 report as a powerful tool to encourage law reform. However, by wildly overstating its Canadian claims it has undermined its credibility and confirmed criticisms that the report lacks reliability or objective analysis. Rather than increasing the pressure for reforms, it seems more likely to be characterized as little more than a lobbyist document that is best ignored.