By Stephen Michalowicz

Despite claims to the contrary by Canadian recording industry lobby groups like CRIA and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, Canada is not the leading world source of digital media piracy. According to a new study by BayTSP—a U.S. firm which investigates file sharing for the movie and music industries—Canada doesn’t lead the world in copyright infringement notices. As Michael Geist reports (the study hasn’t been publicly released yet), Canada’s rank is declining; last year Canada ranked seventh, this year it only ranks tenth. In terms of both total numbers and on a per-capita basis, Canada isn’t the worst offender—the real pirates are in Spain, Italy, and France, each of which garners five times as many infringement notices as Canada, but of those four countries, only Canada is on the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative’s Priority Watch List for copyright infringement and media piracy.