Canada labelled a safe haven for Internet pirates

Canada’s failure to adapt and respond to changing technologies could harm its economic prospects, the Conference Board of Canada warns.

In a series of reports, the Conference Board addresses Canada’s rampant Internet piracy and the government’s inadequate regulation of file sharing and downloading. According to a press release issued by the Conference Board today, illegal downloads total 1.3 billion, a figure that is 65 times greater than the number of legal ones in Canada. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development had previously found Canada to have the highest per capita rate of file swapping of any country.

“If Canada does not change its approach to intellectual property, its economic outlook will suffer,” Gilles Rhéaume, the Conference Board’s vice president of public policy, said in today’s press release. “Intellectual-property protection is the essential ingredient that allows creators of knowledge to obtain value of their work without it being copied or stolen. Canada is earning a reputation, one that is not to be envied, as the file-swapping capital of the world.”

The Conference Board largely attributes the high rate of file swapping to Canada’s failure to ratify the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Internet treaties. Its reports recommend strategies for protecting and promoting intellectual property rights in Canada, including suggestions such as ratifying the treaties, giving more authority to the Canada Border Services Agency, and cracking down on intellectual-property crimes and violations.

The Conference Board’s press release follows an announcement made on May 20 by the United States Congressional International Anti-Piracy Caucus concerning Canada’s inclusion on the 2009 International Piracy Watch List, along with fellow offenders China, Russia, Spain, and Mexico.

The Watch List condemned Canada for insufficient “legislation or developed jurisprudence which clearly provides an effective means for copyright holders to protect their works from on-line piracy or to enable a legitimate digital marketplace to develop”.

The Congressional International Anti-Piracy Caucus concluded that a “lack of political will” to deal with copyright breaches and a “legal void has made Canada an attractive location for illicit websites, and Canada has regrettably become know as a ”˜safe haven’ for Internet pirates”.