The US Congress on Wednesday included China, Spain, Mexico, Canada, and Spain in its 2009 International Piracy Watch List and said that these five countries have weak copyright enforcement which put the creative industry at risk.
The Congressional International Anti-Piracy committee said that piracy in these countries has reached at an alarming level and blamed this to the lack of its governments’ move to curb such unlawful activities which violate the rights of artists and producers.
Lawmakers also said that the proliferation of piracy in these countries cost the entertainment industry and creative talents in the US billions of dollars, adding that even ordinary Americans who are working for the industry are gravely affected by the widespread infringement of international copyright law.
Analysts said the US entertainment industry lost more than 25 billion every year due to the looming problem of piracy which is further aggravated by the advancement in technology especially from the Internet media where a huge portion of illegal distribution of copyrighted materials occurs.
One controversial Internet technology called the bittorrent protocol allows users to download huge files of music, games, software, and movies. And because this technology has solved the problem of huge Internet traffic, some sites have used this to illegally distribute copyrighted materials.
Meanwhile, the committee criticized Spain for allowing bittorrent and peer-to-peer piracy to continue unhindered as its government has recently decriminalized unlawful file sharing and distribution of copyrighted contents.
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) also blamed the digital piracy as the major threat in the industry.
The Congress also criticized Chinese government for permitting online piracy to operate in the country and cited Baidu, which is China’s version of Google, as the main source of illegal copies of music.