The US has named 12 nations who the Bush administration think fails to sufficiently protect American producers of music, movies and other copyrighted material.

According to the Associated Press, the Bush administration has placed Russia, China, Argentina, Chile, Egypt, India, Israel, Lebanon, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine and Venezuela on a "priority watch list".

The US is thinking of bringing trade cases against these countries before the World Trade organisation.

Another 31 countries have been placed on a lower level monitoring list.  These include Belarus, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Hungary, Indonesia, Italy, Jamaica, South Korea, Kuwait, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.

More here.