Oh, Canada…

I am Canadian. Yaarrrrr!!!

I admit, Canada’s reputation on digital piracy could be better.

For you non-hosers, that’s probably a bit hard to take in. Piracy? Canada? We’re supposed to be the nice upstairs neighbours who take in your mail when you’re away. The boring friend that you bring along on pub night so you look more attractive by comparison. We have a nice personality! But you should know that despite all outward appearances, lurking beneath every sensible Hudson’s Bay cardigan and reindeer sweater beats the rapacious heart of a pirate!

So you’ve got to take what we say with a grain of sea-splashed salt, especially when we’re talking about ourselves.

For example, when the Conference Board of Canada (aka. Pirates R Us) released a report damning us all as pirates and offering suggestions on how we might reform our rapscallion ways that something had to be amiss. A pirate, after all, doesn’t just come clean. As it turns out, much to the relief of every DRM-picking Canuck worth his white earbuds, the report was itself was plagiarized from a prior report released by an American lobby group representing copyright holders.

Hat tip: Search Engine podcast