Love it or hate it, the United States Trade Representative released the results of its Special 301 Review of Notorious Markets earlier this week. The review, which began in October of last year, is intended to identify markets that provide the biggest threats to US copyright law in other countries.

Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 requires that the USTR undertake annual surveys of foreign countries’ intellectual property policies, and ultimately allows the executive branch to impose trade sanctions on a country found to be in violation of trade agreements without the burden of congressional action. The process has not been without criticism for its openness to corporate interests. The results of the Section 301 Review Public Hearing held on Wednesday are due to be published April 30^th.

In 2010 however, the USTR decided to initiate a process whereby the agency reviews written submissions from the public containing examples of particularly “notorious” markets in terms of US copyright infringement in an effort to further expose said markets.

Among other countries, China’s name appears repeatedly in this year’s list. Apart from a number of physical markets reminiscent of the “swap meet” described in Fonovisa v. Cherry Auction, the majority of the activities taking part in China are in the digital realm. Baidu, found near the top of the list, provides among other services a search engine for their index of websites, images, and multimedia content, including mp3 and movie files. The search engine itself bears a striking resemblance to Google, as does the company’s huge market share in the country. The report claims that 91.com, a website allowing the piracy of numerous Smartphone software, is responsible for over half of all downloaded applications in China. The report also lists Taobao, an online retail and auction site similar to eBay, which purportedly facilitates the sale of infringing goods, and TV Ants, a service (reportedly based in China) allowing users to stream TV channels from the world over.

The list also names a number of BitTorrent indexers and trackers. Sweden’s ThePirateBay has been the target of many recent takedown notices and other legal actions, with the site defending its actions as legal under Swedish contributory infringement policy. Also included in the list are Canada’s IsoHunt and Ukraine’s Demonoid.

While the list is arguably a good way to increase awareness about infringing markets, and provides a less harsh alternative to country-on-country litigation and WTO disputes, one has to wonder what good will really come of it. Will those countries targeted consider the list an affront, and work to form their own sanctions on US trade? If nothing else, the USTR may have just provided the download generation with a new list of hot links. That is, if their translation skills are up to it.

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