IIPA: "China and Russia Remain Major Concerns for Copyright Industries"

The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) has made a statement on USTR’s decisions in its 2009 Special 301 Review affecting copyright protection and enforcement around the world. No real surprises, including that the IIPA commends USTR for the decision to elevate Canada to the Priority Watch List.

This is what IIPA stated April 30, 2009 about China:

“China and Russia both continue to be major concerns to the copyright industries, as they were in 2008 and prior years. While there have been some positive developments in both these key markets over the past year, enforcement efforts generally remain inadequate, and the copyright industries continue to await sustained, effective and deterrent enforcement, enhanced legal reform, and greater market access for legitimate copyrighted materials.”

“While the Chinese government has launched enforcement efforts, these have so far not proven to be effective in dealing with pervasive piracy in the physical and online markets. These problems have been exacerbated by the maintenance of severe and discriminatory market access restrictions for the distribution of some categories of U.S. content. China must significantly expand its use of criminal measures in appropriate circumstances and employ all available tools, including administrative sanctions, to prevent companies such as Baidu and Kangjian Shixun from continuing to profit from providing access to infringing materials.”

China's number one search engine Baidu needs no introduction. Beijing Kangjian Shixun Technology Company with the sites http://www.kjmed.com.cn/ and http://www.kjmed.com.cn/ offers "subscribers access to the firm’s Foreign Medical Journal Full-Text Service (FMJS), a paid service that sells electronic copies of medical journals, including many well-known American ones, obtained from libraries at no cost", according to the US-China Business Council, see here.

• Business Software losses 2008 2940.0 million US dollar levels 79 percent.

Business Software Alliance (BSA)’s 2008 statistics are preliminary. They represent the U.S. software publishers’ share of software piracy losses in each country, and follow the methodology compiled in the Fifth Annual BSA and IDC Global Software Piracy Study (May 2008). These figures cover, in addition to business applications software, computer applications such as operating systems, consumer applications such as PC gaming, personal finance,and reference software.

• Records & Music losses 2008 564.0 million US dollar levels 90 percent.
  

Read the IIPA's press release (4 pages pdf) here.