Each year the office of the US Trade Representative releases "Special 301" watch lists, identifying countries that it believes "deny adequate and effective protection for intellectual property rights," in order to pressure trading partners to strengthen IP laws or step up enforcement against piracy. The US-based International Intellectual Property Alliance—a consortium of copyright industry trade groups that includes the Business Software Alliance, Entertainment Software Association, Motion Picture Association of America, and Recording Industry Association of America—released its own humble recommendations for the lists this week, naming 38 countries that it believes need to do more to crack down in IP infringement—and once again singling out China, Russia, and (yes, really) Canada for special attention as "priority" offenders. The USTR must produce its final "watch list" and "priority watch list" by April 30.

The IIPA's 2009 report recommends 13 countries for the "priority" list: Argentina, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, the Philippines, Russia, and Thailand. A further 25 are nominated for the plain vanilla watch list, including Israel, which the group suggests downgrading from the priority list, as well as new additions Sweden, Bulgaria, and Kazakhstan, due to "recent troubling legislative and/or enforcement developments in their respective markets." Taiwan is dropped from the proposed watch lists entirely for the first time in a decade—though it remains on a shorter list of honorable-mention countries deserving "special monitoring."

To justify its recommendations, the report also includes industry-specific breakdowns for purported dollar losses to US industry attributable to each targeted country. All told—and including both the recommended watch-list countries and those named for "special monitoring"—IIPA claims member groups lost some $18.4 billion due to lax IP enforcement or insufficiently stringent laws in 2008, down from $20.1 billion in 2007—though much of that decline is presumably attributable to the exclusion of the movie, book publishing, and video game industries, for which current figures weren't provided: Video games claimed $2.7 billion in losses for 2007, books $529 million. The current number, then breaks down as $16.4 billion in claimed losses for business software makers and $1.97 billion for the music industry.

Though a precise 2008 number isn't yet available, video game makers did attempt to gauge the scale of piracy abroad. In December alone, they claimed that 13 popular titles were downloaded 6.4 million times—with just two titles accounting for 4.7 million of those. Italy and Spain alone were named as the top downloaders, together accounting for nearly a third of the illicit copying, with France, Germany, and Poland following close behind.

Not everyone takes industry loss estimates at face value, of course. As an appendix explaining the methodology behind the numbers makes clear, the Business Software Association is in the habit of counting every pirated copy of software installed on a computer abroad as a lost sale at full market price—a plainly invalid inference that Ars has criticized with depressing frequency, to little avail. The RIAA appears to follow the same model, though the appendix is somewhat vague, while in the past the movie and video game industries have at least attempted to adjust their figures by estimating the proportion of pirate customers who might otherwise buy the legal product.

Countries that find themselves on the list have raised their own objections in the past. Canadian officials have complained that the "Special 301" process "lacks reliable and objective analysis" and is "driven entirely by U.S. industry."

The USTR's 301 lists may have added significance this year, thanks to the passage of the PRO-IP Act which creates a federal copyright "czar" charged with developing a coordinated, interagency IP protection plan, including aid to help pirate-friendly countries step up enforcement and special liaisons to piracy "hotspots."

A full list of public submissions to the USTR on the 301 process can be found at Regulations.gov.