Just days after four Pirate Bay defendants were found guilty in Sweden, Biden warned of the harms of piracy at a private event organized by the Motion Picture Association of America in the sumptuous, newly renovated Great Hall of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.
"It's pure theft, stolen from the artists and quite frankly from the American people as consequence of loss of jobs and as a consequence of loss of income," Biden said, according to a White House pool report.
Biden blasted China, saying its intellectual property laws remain "largely ineffective" and will end up "strangling their own creative juices," and compared it to what he described as India's more effective anti-piracy regime. He singled out Canada, a close U.S. ally, as needing stronger laws; it never signed the treaty that led to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and a proposal to adopt anti-circumvention restrictions was never adopted.He also addressed President Obama's forthcoming decision about who will be named the intellectual-property enforcement coordinator, better known as the copyright czar. Copyright industry lobbyists sent a letter Monday to the president asking him to pick someone sympathetic to their concerns, while groups that would curb copyright law sent their own letter urging the opposite approach.
We "will find the right person for intellectual property czar," Biden said.