The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) has again submitted its annual review of intellectual property-related issues to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR). As we have come to expect from the Special 301 report, there are dozens of countries on its Watch Lists – both the usual piracy suspects, like Russia, as well as surprise entrants such as Canada, which the IIPA has identified as “the lone OECD nation that has not modernized its copyright laws to reflect the rise of the Internet.” As we have also come to expect, the Special 301 report decries the job and revenue losses caused by piracy of all types of copyright materials — software, games, videos, and CD’s.

What is new this year is an increased focus on Internet file-sharing. This signals that the IIPA recognizes that the most important issue is no longer one of back-alley photocopying, or even “merely” one of commercial-scale physical piracy. With the explosion of online methods for file sharing through P2P networks, high-intensity reproduction of copyrighted works has become more mainstream and more widespread, and has started to reach the type and level of activity that everyone can easily see as piracy. And P2P file sharing is no longer just for music and movies. As we noted in a recent post, P2P has also moved into publishing, as evidenced by the troubling rise in textbook file “sharing”.

Alarmingly, the ubiquity and ease of “sharing” copyright materials seems to be conferring legitimacy on the practice – at least in some eyes. As file sharing technology becomes even more convenient and is paired with wider and wider Internet bandwidth, the impact on copyright industries is likely to become even harder to address, as infringement and even piracy start to come more from individuals than from traditional mass-production operations.

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