This entry was posted on Friday, July 10th, 2009 at 9:56 am and is filed under Politics . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
posted by
CCER at
Fri, Jul 10th, 2009
Ubisoft is set to receive a government grant to the tune of $263 million to set up a new game design studio in Toronto. Touted by the Ontario Government as a shift toward more high tech type jobs and projected to add as much as 800 jobs over the next 10 years, however, a number of questions linger. Ubisoft reported a profit last year of $111.5 million, but the Ontario Government feels it can justify sinking $263 million into this company?
We invite you to draw your own conclusions from the above but do not ignore the fact the Ubisoft is committed to substantial investment and operations in Canada. This then leads to our next question; if Canadian IP laws are really as lax as the ESA, CRIA, CMPDA and IIPA claim them to be, why would one of the largest and most respected games studios in the world want to expand operations and continue investmenting in Canada? After all, the International Intellectual Property Alliance claims:
Canada, virtually alone among developed economies in the OECD, remains almost entirely out of compliance with the global minimum world standards embodied in the Treaties…To underscore U.S. insistence that Canada finally take action to address the serious piracy problem it has allowed to develop just across our border, and that it bring its outmoded laws up to contemporary international standards, IIPA recommends that Canada be elevated to the Priority Watch List in 2009.
So does Ubisoft just have a backwards business model? Would a prominent, well regarded and growing video game developer really expand in a country where apparently piracy is the “scourge” causing “considerable economic and competitive damage to Canada’s manufacturing and services sectors and to Canada’s international reputation by the proliferation of counterfeiting and piracy of intellectual property.” Someone is clearly feeding the Canadian public and politicians false information. I would hedge my bets on Ubisoft having this one right and the lobbyists, special interest groups and lawsuit happy IP lawyers continuing to lack real world examples to back their outrageous blame Canada claims.
One Response to “ Ubisoft Proving That Canada Is Not So Bad After All ”
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July 25th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
” if Canadian IP laws are really as lax as the ESA, CRIA, CMPDA and IIPA claim them to be, why would one of the largest and most respected games studios in the world want to expand operations and continue investmenting in Canada? ”
Maybe because they’re getting $263 million dollars? A business that makes $115 million in profits in a year, and the government is going to give them $263 million,,,, hmmm, maybe they’re doing it for the copyright laws, but the free money.
Hmmm,