Canada’s embarrassing place in the BitTorrent rankings, Torrentz.com and IsoHunt world leaders

TorrentFreak just published its Top 25 Most Popular Torrent Sites of 2009. The list is based on traffic rank reports from Compete, Alexa and SiteReport’s World Rank.

Out of the top 25, 7 of them are located or have connections to Canada. Of the top 10, 4 are located or have connections to Canada. This means that Canada, alone, is home to more than 25% of the world’s public English language unauthorized BitTorrent sites and 40% of the leading ones are in Canada.  The sites and their rankings according to TorrentFreak are:

Canada’s place in the world, as the number 1 location for unauthorized BitTorrent sites, cannot be lost on our trading partners who have upgraded their laws to meet the challenges of the Internet, only to find that its citizens can still illegally share files by using sites located in Canada.

The Member States of the EU, for example, were quick to enact legislation to implement the WIPO Treaties shortly after they were agreed to in 1996. The formality of ratification was just completed yesterday. However, in the meantime, the making available right required by the WIPO Treaties (and implemented in Member States) and effective secondary liability doctrines have been used to shut down EU based BiTtorrent sites.

Meanwhile, Canada has not upgraded its laws to address digital piracy facilitated by p2p sites and services including by implementing the WIPO Treaties, even though Canada agreed to do so when it signed them over 12 years ago. And what has happened in the interim? Unauthorized p2p sites are being chased out of the EU and have gravitated to Canada.