such uses, and it is important for countries to provide for appropriate remedies in their legal systems to address this issue. A related and growing concern is that ccTLDs lack transparent and predictable uniform domain name dispute resolution policies (UDRPs). Effective UDRPs should assist in the quick and efficient resolution of these disputes. The United States encourages its trading partners to provide procedures that allow for the protection of trademarks used in domain names and to ensure that dispute resolution procedures are available to prevent the misuse of trademarks.
Government Use of Licensed Software
Under Executive Order 13103 issued in September 1998, U.S. Government agencies maintain policies and procedures to ensure that they use only authorized business software. Pursuant to the same directive, USTR has undertaken an initiative to work with other governments, particularly in countries that are modernizing their software systems or where concerns have been raised, against unauthorized government use of software. Considerable progress has been made under this initiative, leading to numerous trading partners' mandating that only legitimate software be used by their government bodies. It is important for governments to legitimize their own activities in order to set an example for the public of respecting IPR. Further work on this issue remains with certain trading partners, such as Algeria, China, Costa Rica, Morocco, Pakistan, Paraguay, Tajikistan, Thailand, Ukraine, and Vietnam. The United States urges trading partners to adopt and implement effective and transparent procedures to ensure legitimate governmental use of software.
Digital Piracy, Piracy Online, and Broadcast Piracy
The increased availability of broadband Internet connections around the world, combined with increasingly accessible and sophisticated mobile technology, is generating significant benefits, ranging from economic activity based on new business models to greater access to information. However, these technological developments have also made the Internet an extremely efficient vehicle for disseminating infringing content, and for supplanting legitimate opportunities for copyright holders and online platforms that deliver licensed content. The U.S. Government's 2014 Notorious Markets List (available at www.ustr.gov) includes examples of online marketplaces reportedly engaging in commercial-scale IPR counterfeiting and piracy, including sites hosted in, or operated by, parties located in Brazil, Canada, China, Russia, Switzerland, Ukraine, and elsewhere.
While optical disc piracy continues in many countries, including in China, India, Paraguay, and Vietnam, piracy over the Internet has become the priority copyright enforcement issue in many trading partner markets. For example, the unauthorized retransmission of live sports programming over the Internet continues to grow in a number of countries and regions,
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