Thread: Canada still in copyright "hall of shame" according to the US

Sorry, Canada—negotiating the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) wasn't enough to show your commitment to "strong" intellectual property rights. If you want out of the American copyright "hall of shame," you're just going to have to pass a major copyright overhaul that makes US rightsholders happy.



The US Trade Representative yesterday released its annual "Special 301" report (PDF) naming and shaming countries with IP policies the US doesn't like. The report contains a "Watch List" and a smaller "Priority Watch List"—and Canada is once again on the Priority Watch List along with China, Russia, and India.


Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Egypt, Bolivia, Brunei, Romania, Spain, even Mexico—Canada is worse then all of them. Why? Canada hasn't yet passed a major copyright overhaul that has already been introduced in several different versions over the last few years.

Unfortunately, Canadian efforts in 2010 to enact long-awaited copyright legislation were unsuccessful. The United States encourages Canada to make the enactment of copyright legislation that addresses the challenges of piracy over the Internet, including by fully implementing the WIPO Internet Treaties, a priority for its new government. The United States encourages Canada to provide for deterrent-level sentences to be imposed for IPR violations, as well as to strengthen enforcement efforts, including at the border. Canada should provide its Customs officials with ex officio authority to effectively stop the transit of counterfeit and pirated products through its territory.

But all is not lost. USTR announced a new program this year under which it "invites any trading partner appearing on the Special 301 Priority Watch List or Watch List to negotiate a mutually agreed action plan designed to lead to that trading partner’s removal from the relevant list."


The US wants a worldwide crackdown on things like "unauthorized retransmission of live sports telecasts over the Internet," "linking sites," and "piracy using mobile telephones, tablets, flash drives, and other mobile technologies." And it's happy to videoconference in US government lawyers to help write the laws that will get countries off the Special 301 list. Now that's service.

Source = ArsTechnica.com : Canada still in copyright "hall of shame" according to the US

Never been prouder to be Canadian lol

Canadian ISPs are also on "hall of shame" because of traffic limits.
Can you imagine that you have only 100GB traffic all over a month?

This will change now that the conservatives have a majority government. Also, the standard bandwidth cap in Canada is 60 gigs, not 100

I'm Canadian as well (who would have thought!) :)

I agree that our copyright laws might change with the new conservative majority. They will probably crack down on copyright law and make it much stricter. They were the only Canadian party that didn't bother to respond to OpenMedia's digital future survey:
Digital Future Survey: The Parties Respond | OpenMedia.ca

Have to hope for the best, but unfortunately they were already trying to pass bill C32 before parliament dissolved. I'm sure they will pick up where they left off, it will probably be even worse. Now they have senate and house majorities, copyright reform is not going to be right around the corner. :(

Does anyone know the situation for companies like Gamedtuff.ca if Canada caves into US demands? Are they likely to give in?
How would it effect people who have seedbox hosting agreements with them?
I am currently looking into getting a seedbox with Gamestuff.ca, should I hold off until this all clears up?

This will have no impact with gamestuff.ca seedbox plans. His seedboxes aren't hosted in Canada, just the company is. Don't let this hold your decision up.

Our servers are not in canada so the servers could not be compromised unless a joint effort by multiple countries.

Our Website and User database are spread over 3 canadian based hosting companies so it would be very hard for someone to gain access to all of those at once. I feel i have a good defence built up against the "government of harper" but that being said you never know.


btw, torrenting copyrighted material is illegal :(

The more restrictions governments try to place, the more popular torrenting will become.