Canada: Death from Above 2008

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The copyright industries’ assault on Canada, which the U.S. Trade Representative declined to join last month, picked up some support in Congress today. The Congressional International Anti-Piracy Caucus declared Canada to be one of the ‘ignominious three,’ alongside China and Russia, when it comes to protecting intellectual property.

The complaint against Canada is that it hasn’t ‘modernized’ its copyright law for the digital age. The International Intellectual Property Alliance -- a trade group backed by studios, labels, software companies and publishers -- has been pushing Washington to prod Canada into complying with the WIPO treaties. Among other things, it wants Canada to adopt anti-circumvention language a la the DMCA, ‘create strong legal incentives’ for ISPs to help combat piracy, and ‘clarify that illicit file-sharing services are a violation because they authorize infringement.’ Of course, the United States hasn’t really done the latter two things, either, at least not to the extent that the copyright community desires. That’s one of the reasons the push to punish Canada has drawn scorn north of the border.

UPDATE -- For a good discussion of anti-circumvention rules, see this post today by Bill Patry.

With that in mind, here’s a few words from the geniuses at South Park: