An ITBusiness.ca article by Paolo Del Nibletto starts with, "Before I start explaining what the International Intellectual Property Alliance is doing, I wish to say what a load of crap this all is." The editors at ITBusiness rightly suggest that, "Harper has more important things to do than pander to these interests".
I sent the following in email to Paolo
Thank you for taking up this issue on your BLOG. This is such hypocrisy given the only reason the USA itself isn't on this list is because the list is managed by the USA. It is largely based on misinformation on the status of Copyright in Canada where distributing camcorded videos is illegal, unauthorized P2P is illegal (but requires evidence to get a court order to get past our stronger privacy legislation), and there are many ways in which US law is more "liberal" than Canadian law (IE: we have limited fair dealings, while they have Fair Use which better protects the interests of average citizens from excessive control by copyright holders). Canada has severe (many say excessive) statutory damages, potentially putting into bankruptcy private citizens who carried out activities that many Canadians consider as serious as jay-walking.
What these private and public sector lobbiests from the USA are asking for isn't protection for creativity or innovation, but protectionism for specialized business models and methods of production and distribution that are currently dominated by US firms. The best thing that Canada can do to protect the Canadian economy is to reject their protectionism and enact laws which benefit Canadian creativity and innovation!
What is this really about?
"Over half (53%) of the value of all royalty and license fees paid in 2002 were received in one territory: the United States. Large proportions of these fees were also received in Japan and the United Kingdom."