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The proliferation of recordable CD technology is fuelling a boom in sales of pirated music discs, according to research from a music industry trade association.
The report from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry shows that global sales of pirate music discs rose nearly 50 percent to an all-time high of 950 million units in 2001. The total world music pirate market was estimated to be worth USD4.3 billion, a slight increase on the previous year.
One factor influencing the boom is the availability of cheap, portable equipment capable of making high-quality duplicates, especially for recordable CDs (CD-R). This means that large-scale manufacturing plants are not the only targets for enforcement officials anymore, as smaller-scale, "garage" operations can be hidden virtually anywhere.
Commercial CD-R pirate sales tripled in 2001 to 450 million units. The largest manufacturing operations are based in South East Asia, which along with Latin America saw a major increase in the number of discs seized last year.
The leader board of countries where more than half of music sold is pirated includes Greece, China, Egypt and Kenya; Greece also topped charts released earlier this month for top offenders in software piracy.
The figures from IFPI show that countries including Ireland, the UK, the US and Japan all had less than 10 percent domestic piracy last year.
IFPI's chairman Jay Berman said people must stop seeing piracy as a "victimless crime," noting that it harms everyone from the artists themselves to the development of local music. Piracy also nurtures organised crime, he said.
"Very often the money that is paid for pirate CDs will be channelled into the drugs trade, money laundering or other forms of serious organised criminal activity," the report noted.
The value of music piracy quoted in the report included only commercial music piracy, not downloadable music from the Internet or CD-burning by consumers. On the Internet side, IFPI said its affiliated groups helped remove more than 1,000 unauthorised peer-to-peer music services last year. But as of May, 2002, there were still an estimated 3 million users and 500 million files available on remaining peer-to-peer sites worldwide.
More information is available from the IFPI Web site.
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