Canada accused of safeguarding pirates, ESA & friends seek blacklisting
The IIPA, a coalition of US media groups that includes the Entertainment Software Association, is urging the Bush administration to blacklist Canada for its failure to protect intellectual property rights. The IIPA alleges that Canada has not delivered on its promise to modernize the country's copyright laws, in turn, fueling a hotbed of piracy.
Canada was placed on the US's low-priority watch list three years ago, but the IIPA believes it's time to elevate the bordering nation to the "priority watch list," joining notorious pirate havens like Belize, China, Indonesia, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine and Venezuela. Canada has supposedly emerged as a leading exporter of console mod chips, led by organized-crime rings like the Hells Angels in Quebec and the Big Circle Boys in Ontario and British Columbia.
"Canada remains far behind virtually all of its peers in the industrialized world with respect to its efforts to bring its copyright laws up to date with the realities of the global digital networked environment," claimed the IIPA in its submission to the US trade czar.
See also: Mod chips soon in vogue Down Under
