Today, a report by International Intellectual Property Alliance (of which the ESA is a part) to the United States Trade Representative was filed. This “Special 301 Report” reviews copyright violations and piracy in 39 countries. The ESA noted that illicit mod chips are still a huge problem, fueling piracy globally.
“Intellectual property theft stunts our industry’s innovative momentum and job growth,” said Michael D. Gallagher, president and CEO of the ESA. “Innovators, artists and consumers are all hurt when foreign markets are closed off because their governments fall short in enacting and enforcing meaningful trade protection measures that discourage large-scale piracy.”
For its part, the IIPA recommends that 35 of the countries identified be named to an appropriate USTR Watch List, including Mexico and Canada. The ESA pointed to "alarmingly high volumes of illegal game downloads" across the leading P2P platforms – BitTorrent, eDonkey, Gnutella, and Ares. ESA revealed that the number of game illegal downloads during December 2009 of 200 ESA member games was 9.78 million; they note that this is only a fraction of overall online piracy since it does not include “cyberlockers” or “one-click” hosting sites.
The full report will soon be available at www.iipa.com.
