Canada’s Placement on U.S. Piracy List Just Bluster: Lawyers

(CBC News)

But business group warns it could scare off investors

Canada’s addition to a “priority watch list” of countries deemed soft on copyright piracy by the United States shouldn’t and probably won’t perturb the Canadian government, say Canadian researchers who study copyright and Canada-U.S. trade relations.

“We’ve been placed in a spotlight, but the United States has not indicated that it’s prepared to take any action,” said Chi Carmody, a law professor at the University of Western Ontario and the Canadian director of the Canada-United States Law Institute.

“My sense is that Canada’s inclusion on the list this year is not really something that the United States is concerned about in our bilateral relationship, but more as an example to the rest of the world.”

He added that Canada is a sovereign country with the right to make its own decisions, and that he believes the government is committed to a “made in Canada” approach to copyright and intellectual property, “as we should be.”

Canada was among 12 countries that made the “priority watch list” in an annual report released by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative last week on intellectual property rights protection by 77 U.S. trading partners. Canada had long been on the office’s “watch list,” but this is the first time Canada, Algeria and Indonesia made the higher-priority tier long occupied by countries such as China and Russia. Read more here.