BPI demands action on pirate CDs

August 29, 2006

heystoopid spotted the following news for us and used our news submit to let us know: "Whilst browsing the boing boing blog, I came across this piece of news, about the level of claimed music piracy in the United Kingdom, a country with a population of a mere 60 million or so with 82.6% over the age of 15(CIA World Fact Book ).Based on these figures, approximately 2 out of 3 citizens have purchased or will purchase a pirated audio cd annually?

Now these figures exclude the claimed losses from MPAA"s bootleg and pirated DVD"s in the same country as well!Oh well, with such large gross sales numbers, these music pirates must have an extremely large and open distribution network, and that could outsell even Tower Records! But then again who would have thought that so many citizens residing in the United Kingdom these days, were so light fingered so as to speak and preferred to seek their entertainment at the low price illegal 5 finger discount oulets spread across the length and breadth of the country in every town and village!

Still, the question remains how does does BPI dream up such outrageous numbers, or are they including the resale of legitimate secondhand audio cd"s to beef up the figures, or the legitimate sale of blank cdr"s used for legitimate computer backup files, so as to speak? Now they wish the UK Police Forces to divert critical forces assigned to fight terrorism and other organized common garden criminal gangs, to police these illicit commercial pirates!(and here I thought, we had common commercial laws to prevent same?). Such is life, that numbers are truly fun to play with!"

UK record companies have demanded stronger action on CD piracy, saying 37m pirated CDs were sold last year.The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) says intellectual property crime should be "higher on the police"s agenda".A survey suggests CD piracy cost the industry Â£165m in lost revenue in 2005 - nearly 10% of total sales.Car boot sales and markets accounted for over a third of pirated CDs, while a quarter were bought from friends, the survey found.The survey found that 37 million pirated CDs were sold in the UK in 2005, the value of which was more than the combined legal sales of the leading 13 albums in the UK.