Two years ago, Ottawa enacted legislation criminalizing camcording in cinemas. And yet in May, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative placed Canada on its Priority Watch List – claiming ‘estimated trade losses due to copyright piracy’ in Canada in 2008 of US$742 million.

A casual observer might think Canada still isn’t doing enough to combat piracy.

But the devil, as always, is in the details. The USTR relies on data collated by the International Intellectual Property Alliance, an organization funded by such groups as the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, which lead the charge against piracy. Indeed, a closer look at the USTR’s 2008 statistics shows that that US$742 million was entirely based on alleged trade losses in business software. The numbers for motion pictures are shown as ‘N/A.’

Michael Geist, a professor of law at the University of Ottawa and an outspoken critic of Ottawa’s recent efforts on copyright, says such statistics are difficult to validate. ‘The IIPA and the U.S. government have continued their aggressive campaign to characterize Canada as a piracy haven,’ Geist told Playback. ‘I don’t believe that the claims stand up to any kind of scrutiny.’

According to Wendy Noss, the executive director of the Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association, in 2006, Canadian camcordings – that is, films pirated in Canadian cinemas – were the source of between 20% and 25% of the MPAA member titles that appeared online or on pirated DVDs in the world.

In 2008, says Noss, the percentage was less than half of the 2006 number.

That would suggest that, in 2008, at least 10% to 12.5% of movies pirated by camcorder were emanating from Canada – still an astonishing number.

And yet Canada’s national police force has yet to lay any charges under the anti-camcording Section 432 of the Criminal Code, according to Sgt. Greg Cox of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Cox says he knows of convictions by other Canadian police services, but the RCMP doesn’t track them.

(Though selling or distributing pirated music and movies is a criminal offence, Cox notes that downloading the same content for personal use is not. It is copyright infringement, a civil matter over which the rights owner could sue, in which case a person may be liable for damages of up to $20,000 for each unauthorized download, as well as court costs.)

Noss says three people have been convicted since 2007, one in Calgary and two in Montreal.

Further, some anti-camcording measures can backfire. In May, Quebec exhibitor Cinémas Guzzo was found to have violated a movie patron’s privacy and ordered to pay $10,000 for an ‘aggressive’ search of her family’s bags.