Earlier today the International Anti-Piracy Caucus led by Sens. Biden
(D-Del.) and Smith (R-Ore.) and Reps. Schiff (D-Cal.) and Goodlatte (R-Va.)
released the 2008
International Piracy Watch List. The actual list is here, 
Goodlatte and Schiff both focused on the troubles with copyright enforcement in
Russia and China, which were also recently singled out by the U.S.
Trade Representative. There were also calls for Canada to finally implement
their obligations under the WIPO treaties, which the government has been
hinting it would do for a year but has failed to do so. Note it's already been
10 years since Canada made this commitment. The latest news,
however, suggests further delays are likely.

Two Copyright Alliance members spoke, MPAA CEO Dan Glickman and BSA CEO
Robert Holleyman. Glickman called out Spain as a particularly troublesome
country, along with Mexico, which lacks anti-camcording laws. Holleyman promoted
the power of positive legislation in enforcing piracy. BSA just came out with
its latest international software piracy study, and he commented on that
yesterday on the Copyright
Alliance blog.

The annual International Piracy Watch List is a valuable service that the
Caucus provides, updating us on the key nations to watch, which are improving,
and which are possibly worse. It also comes at a good time, as the PRO-IP bill
has cleared the House overwhelmingly and is now ripe to be taken up in the
Senate. As Robert Holleyman said, there are positive roles Congress can play in
copyright
enforcement.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 15th, 2008 at 3:05 pm by Patrick Ross and is filed under international, piracy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.