But the Government decided against it and Canada narrowly missed being included on the list of the usual prime suspects - China, Russia, Argentina, Chile, Egypt, India, Israel, Lebanon, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine and Venezuela.

So, for the fourth year running, Canada remains in the second division of copyright crooks, along with Belarus, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Hungary, Indonesia, Italy, Jamaica, South Korea, Kuwait, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.

The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) blacklist - drawn up in February but only just published - is the first step in a process that can lead to international trade sanctions. The organisation, representing companies including Apple and Microsoft, says that Canada's 'chronic failure' to modernise its copyright legislation has made it a global centre for bootleg movies and pirated software and had wanted the US Government to put Canada on the priority list.

Says the IIPA report: "Canada's long tenure on the USTR Watch List seems to have had no discernible effect on its copyright policy. Almost alone among developed economies in the OECD, Canada has taken no steps toward modernizing its copyright law to meet the new global minimum standards of the WIPO Internet Treaties, which Canada signed a decade ago. Its enforcement record also falls far short of what should be expected of our neighbor and largest trading partner.

"Pirates have taken advantage of the gaps in Canadian law to make it a leading exporter, both of camcorded masters that feed audio-visual piracy worldwide, and of devices - illegal in most global markets besides Canada - that are intended to circumvent technological protection measures used by the publishers of entertainment software. Canada lacks effective border controls on pirated products, and most of its other enforcement efforts suffer from insufficient resources and a lack of deterrent impact.

"To underscore U.S. insistence that Canada take action to address the serious piracy problem it has allowed to develop just across our border, and that it bring its outmoded laws up to contemporary international standards, IIPA recommends that Canada be elevated to the Priority Watch List in 2007."

The IIPA expressed disappointment at the US Government refusal to add Canada to the priority watch list, saying that Canada "continues to stand almost alone among developed countries in its failure to implement the obligations of the two WIPO digital treaties, and weak enforcement in both hard goods and Internet piracy continues to cause great damage to legitimate rights holders, both of Canadian and US copyright products." µ

L'inq
IIPA report