The way I see things is that Canadians have always been pretty ignorant when it comes to a lot of things, especially those ways they claim to be "better" than the US. I think it was pretty obvious we'd be seeing this happen due to all the Canadians running around talking about how they could pretty much pirate any copyrighted work they wanted without repercussions, and stuff about how their goverment was simply effectively paying a fee on it's terms for what it felt it was worth for it's people to do this. Obviously this wasn't going to fly, though the politicians are now in a position where they have to stand behind their claims that there wasn't going to be copyright enforcement of this sort and the goverment could choose simply not to have it, while at the same time enforcing copyrights.
What changed? Well there are two big things.
1.: The lesser one, and what will PO Canadians more than anything else is simply that Canada wasn't seen as being a big enough deal for a while, thus there was no real desire to put REAL pressure on Canada. That's changed, and when you get down to it Canada is pretty small potatoes and now that corperate interestes backed by the USA are starting to see Canada as more of a problem, it really can't deal with it, and is going to have to change as we're seeing in this case.
2.: While it's been a bit quieter for the moment, some of you might have noticed a lot of rumbling about patent and copyright violations by the eastern world where they simply refuse to acknowlege the laws of other nations to protect their own ideas, leading to knock offs, and robber economies pretty much decimating the global economy and contributing heavily to the recession in the first world, as to preverse peace nations like the USA had been borrowing money from the same people stealing from/knocking off their products to pay their bills.
Simply put the western world has been too divided to really take a serious case about this, despite everyone involved having their own interests. A lot of the stuff directed at China has quieted down for the moment, and you've seen a lot more attention being paid through the western world, with the situation we're seeing now in Canada just being the latest and greatest case, standing out because as the article itself points out, this is pretty much exactly the kind of thing that Canada tried to ensure wasn't going to be an issue. Your largely seeing the western world starting to close ranks (or force them closed when the need arises) and get it's house in order to more efficiently fight this issue. It's hard to really take a stand against nations like China, when they can point a finger at how a nation like Canada that is closely allied with those making the complaints (like the US and various first world European countries) publically violates all the same laws China is being hated on for. You can't really say it's effectiely okay for Canada to do fundementally the same thing your working on forcing China and other robber economies to stop doing.
While not popular with the left wing, I think even the leadership of very leftist first world nations have been taking notice of the same things I've been talking about for years. China's huge military build up with little in the way of social improvement (still operating the sweatshops and knockoff factories). The general attitude that more money going into China would lead to a higher standard of living, closing the sweatshops, and forcing more parity due to more worker demands as they money came rolling in has proven false. China still steals everything, knocks it off, and then takes the money and puts it into their military. When China has just rolled out it's first aircraft carrier, paid for with it's robber economy, people tend to take notice, and it becomes increasingly hard to defend their practices for humanitarian principles.
I think the attempt to force robber economies down non-violently and make a stand this way will ultimatly fail, due to it being too late, that's what the big players building up their military was all about (ie it will take a war to stop them from bleeding the rest of the world). It's still going to be attempted though, and towards that end a united front is being created.
Not to mention that Canada itself has a decent number of patents and copyrights at risk here as well. Canada has to some extent wanted to play the game of QQing about their losses to robber economies, while wanting to pretty much ignore the claims by other first world nations. In the long term I think there is some realization slipping in that lawsuits over pirated media and patent violations and such might be annoying, but are a lesser evil than what nations like China have been up to, and the revenue they have been losing to those sources as opposed to what has been being saved by refusing to acknowlege the rights of IP holders.
A lot of people, especially Canadians, will probably jump all over this, but that's the basic trend. No matter how the current case ends I think Canada is going to eventually yield to pressure, especially seeing as it's own best interests are served that way in the long term.
Other players other than the US behind this if you've paid attention, include France and Germany. China has basically stolen trillions of dollars from them (along with the US) in drugs alone. Pfizers while international with complexes in the US is largely a French company, and Germany is the parent nation behind Merck. Viagra alone has been a huge deal because of Asian knockoffs using the stolen/duplicated formula being released internationally. When it comes to drug companies in paticular it's a huge deal because of the massive investment of resources in experimenting and rendering this stuff safe, with tighter and tighter standards, someone who hasn't had to spend billions making and testing the stuff just taking the finished formula and knocking it off is a paticular problem for example. Those thefts not only cost the companies money but also nations that lose the trade and tax revenues, and of course that money goes into things like say... China buying Aircraft Carriers. Extend that into everything from electronic devices, to intellectual properties (like we're talking about here), and you can see why the first world countries that create this kind of stuff have been getting upset, and gradually beginning to realize that if we're going to have any chance at all we're going to have to get off each other's cases, and that involves gradually pressuring countries like Canada into line.
That's how it seems to be going, give it a few years, and even if you spent a lot of time argueing and "debunking" what I'm saying here in my mind, and you'll see I was absolutly right, not that I expect it to amount to a hill of beans honestly, too little too late.
