RIAA reports on CD piracy becoming more sophiscticated

July 14, 2005

The RIAA
has announced its latest report on piracy, but this time about the
unauthorised sale of CD-R copies of music. According to the RIAA, the main
thing that has chanced in recent piracy is how sophisticated CD-R piracy is
becoming with Jewel cases containing authentic looking inserts as well as the
discs themselves being printed to look like the real thing. Another change
is that open street
piracy is going down, with sales of pirate CDs moving to indoors such as retail outlets including music shops (close to the official CD pricing) to convenience, liquor and many other corner shops.

While
piracy may be getting more sophisticated, the RIAA has also reported a 58%
increase in seizures, totalling about 1.2 million counterfeit discs throughout
2004. Pirates are also decreasing the amount of ready-to-sell counterfeit
discs they keep on hand, thus while the seizure of counterfeit CDs
fell by 27%, the seizure of labels being copied rose 372% and the seizure of CD writing equipment doubled compared with throughout 2003. Pirate groups are also working in smaller numbers, including as within individual households and competition between pirates have also forced their counterfeit CD pricing to very low levels apart from where sold in retail music stores.

Latin music accounts for around half of the pirated CD seizures. As a result the RIAA is focusing more on fighting Latin music piracy. According to the RIAA, this has a significant impact on both the Latin artists and their fans, including the future of these artists.

WASHINGTON (By Jonathan Lamy/ Recording Industry Association of America, RIAA) - The illegal copying and trafficking of pirated music has become increasingly sophisticated in the past year, according to new data and analysis released today by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in its annual record of "commercial piracy" (non-Internet) statistics and enforcement efforts.

Among the highlights, pirate music distributors are increasingly manufacturing and selling high-quality product that closely resembles legitimate CDs while large criminal enterprises are becoming increasingly involved in the piracy racket, illegally burning massive numbers of blank CDs with music from today's most popular artists.

"The practice and trade of music piracy have become more sophisticated, cunning and connected to organized crime," said Brad Buckles, Executive Vice President of Anti-Piracy. "Working with law enforcement officials across the country, we continue to develop and implement multifaceted strategies to respond to these emerging threats to artists, songwriters, record labels and others in the music community."

The RIAA reported a 58 percent increase in seizures of counterfeit CDs, the authentic CD look-alikes with high-quality artwork and packaging that make the product appear legitimate. Working together, local law enforcement agencies and RIAA investigators seized 1.2 million counterfeit discs in 2004. This pirate product is increasingly traced back to smaller CD copying plants. The growing number of these smaller-sized facilities over the past few years has created excess production capacity, and some unethical businesses have diverted this excess capacity to the production of high-quality pirate product.

The full, rather lengthy story can be read here.

Well, at least these are the pirates the RIAA
should be after, rather than wasting legal resources, time and money into suing those who share
music over file sharing networks. When a consumer purchases a CD from a counterfeit retailer, chances are that they will never buy that same CD from an official outlet, however this does not apply for when someone goes to sample music online. Quite often when consumers download music to sample it, they do not realise that the music they download ends up being shared out again, until they end up with a lawsuit from the RIAA

Source: Top-40 Charts - Music Industry