- What’s the difference between piracy and file sharing?
Piracy is a multi-billion dollar underground industry involving smuggling, counterfeiting, duplication, and so on. Those engaged in it are hard-core, highly organized criminals.
File sharing means people share with each other. No money changes hands. Those engaged in it are ordinary people. Your next-door neighbours. Your brother. Your aunt. Your friends at school. Entertainment industry customers.
The first group has absolutely nothing to do with the second. And yet the entertainment industry never loses an opportunity to lump them together.
In its Special 301 report, the IIPA (International Intellectual Property Alliance), owned by the big software firms, the record label cartel and major movie studios, says American industries took an estimated $25 billion to $30 billion in global losses from illegal copies of films, software, video games and other copyright industries.
That’s an almost unimaginable amount of money. And organized criminals, not file sharers, are getting it.
Yet in its six global trade priorities for 2005, the IIPA has “Internet piracy” [read file sharing] up front as the Number One item for attention, with electronic commerce and the WIPO Treaties behind it.
Number 2 is optical disc piracy and its effective regulation; 3, piracy by organized crime syndicates; 4, end-user piracy of business software and other copyrighted materials; 5, piracy of books and journals; and 6, improving copyright protection and enforcement, including through free trade agreements.
The report will go, tomorrow, to the US Trade Representative's office (USTR) which black-lists countries it says aren’t living up to expectations in enforcing IIPA owners’ copyrights.
“IIPA’s submission discusses copyright protection and/or enforcement problems in 67 countries/territories, of which it recommends that 42 be placed on an appropriate USTR list,” it says. “Twenty-three of these countries/territories do not have a 301 ranking recommendation but do merit attention by the U.S. government.
“IIPA also identifies two countries where FTA dispute settlement proceedings should be initiated, if prompt resolution of outstanding issues is not reached.”
And the organization has placed Russia, Pakistan and the Ukraine at the top of its hit list.
“Russia’s copyright piracy problem remains one of the most serious in the world,” says the IIPA. “Piracy rates for most sectors are estimated at around 80% in 2004 and conservative estimated losses exceed $1.7 billion. Despite the repeated efforts of industry and the U.S. government to convince the Russian government to provide meaningful and deterrent enforcement of its copyright and other laws against OD factories and all types of piracy - including some of the most open and notorious websites selling unauthorized materials in the world, such as www.allofmp3.com - little progress has been made over the years regarding this egregious situation. Meanwhile, piracy continues unabated in the domestic market and pirate exports continue to spread across both Eastern and Western Europe.”
Pakistan must be designated as a Priority Foreign Country, the report states, continuing, “The Pakistani government has largely ignored the growing production of pirated U.S. copyright products by illicit optical disc factories. Exports of these pirate goods continue to flood world markets. Efforts to persuade the Pakistani government to halt such pirate production and export have, to date, produced few results. Furthermore, the Pakistani government has failed to take adequate measures to stop rampant book piracy and commercial photocopying, which collectively decimate the market for legitimate publishers.”
On the Ukraine, the IIPA “recommends” that it, too, is named as a Priority Foreign Country and that, “trade sanctions should continue accordingly in 2005. This includes the continued suspension of Ukraine’s duty-free trade benefits under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP); those benefits were suspended in August 2001 due to Ukraine’s copyright shortcomings.
“Ukraine has failed to effectively implement the 2000 Joint Action Plan signed by then-President Clinton and President Kuchma.”
It also wants 15 countries to go on the Priority Watch List in 2005: Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Kuwait, Lebanon, the People’s Republic of China, the Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand.
