Crimes that have crippled the music industry are now be taken serious by authories. Hundreds of illegal sites could be threatened with the ‘Global antipiracy treaty’ in works.

Global counterfeiting and piracy steal billions of dollars from workers, artists and entrepreneurs and the U.S. Government plans to strengthen the legal framework of intellectual property rights enforcement.

Now that the government has finally acknowledged this is a serious problem, the next step is to combat this global problem. Countries taking part in the negotiations include Canada, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Switzerland and the 27 member states of the European Union.

The new treaty is intended to complement the existing Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual-Property Rights — the so-called TRIPS agreement established by the World Trade Organization.

“It will not involve any changes to the TRIPS agreement,” the USTR said. “Rather, the goal is to set a new, higher benchmark for enforcement that countries can join on a voluntary basis.”

The Bottom Line: This is good news for anyone who is in the copyright industry. They may finally see the silver lining along the edge of the cloud.