News

A Similar Plan

Today business and entertainment groups called on a government to address piracy and counterfeiting claiming that "our law enforcement resources are seriously misaligned. If you add up all the various kinds of property crimes in this country, everything from theft, to fraud, to burglary, bank-robbing, all of it, it costs the country $16 billion a year. But intellectual property crime runs to hundreds of billions [of dollars] a year."  The groups unveiled a six-point plan that includes:

  • increasing investigative and enforcement resources;
  • strengthening enforcement of counterfeiting laws at borders;
  • increasing penalties for trafficking in counterfeit and pirated goods;
  • improving federal coordination of IP enforcement efforts;
  • reforming civil and judicial processes to combat organized criminal trafficking; and
  • consumer education.

The country? 
The United States, the very country that keeps telling Canadians they aren't doing enough on these issues.

2 Comments

  1. And LAST on the list…
    Funny that the old ‘education’ option as usual is dead last on the list…!

  2. John Meadows says:

    Iffy comparison
    While not condoning counterfeited goods, etc. I have to take issue with the business and entertainment groups’s comparison of the cost of IP crime vs. “classic” crime. In classic crime, for example, if someone steals your car, you are deprived of your car. If someone sells a counterfeit copy of a CD you produced you may be deprived of a sale, but you are not deprived of any physical property.

    This is just a further attempt to equate intellectual property with physical property.