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Study: CD piracy trade tops $4.5 billion

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Christopher

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source: http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/ptech/07/22/m...reut/index.html

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Street-corner peddlers of pirated compact discs sold over 1 billion illegally copied CDs last year, turning a shady black-market trade into an estimated $4.5 billion industry, a new study said on Thursday.

More than one out of every three music compact discs bought by consumers in 2003 was pirated, according to global trade body the International Federation for the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).

And at $4.5 billion, the pirated music market represents nearly 15 percent of the worth of the global record music market, the IFPI estimated.

Already mauled by free song downloads from the Internet, the beleaguered music industry is fighting a second front against more-established commercial piracy outfits where factories in Eastern Europe, Latin America and Southeast Asia crank out large quantities of knock-off chart-topping CDs.

Piracy is cited as a main culprit for the $32 billion industry's four-year slump in recorded music sales.

In unit terms, piracy grew four percent year-on-year in 2003 compared with a 14 percent jump a year earlier. The slowdown was viewed as welcome news, but IFPI officials cautioned it would still step up policing efforts in various hot spots and lobby for tougher anti-piracy laws.

The IFPI named its top ten offending countries in its annual report, including G8 member Russia and Spain, the only European Union entry on the list.

Other perennial hot spots on this year's list were Brazil, China, Taiwan, Ukraine, Thailand, Mexico, Paraguay, and first-time entry Pakistan, which replaced Poland.

"In several of the music industry's very largest markets -- countries with low rates of (Internet) broadband penetration such as Brazil, Mexico and Russia -- piracy of physical discs still dwarfs its Internet equivalent," said IFPI chairman Jay Berman in the annual report.

In Brazil, the amount of pirated music sold grew nine percent in volume terms in 2003 while the legitimate market for recorded music dropped 25 percent, the IFPI said to illustrate the runaway nature of the industry's problem in certain territories.

The IFPI represents scores of independent and major music labels including EMI, Universal Music, Warner Music and the soon-to-merge Sony Music and BMG.

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And we should care about this, why?

When one widget maker can sell a product cheaper than another widget maker, we called that "competition." When one music vendor sells music cheaper than the established industry, they call that "piracy."

I'm sure this kind of verbal nonsense is making real pirates sick.

Let's see, the "pirates" sold 1 billion discs and made $4.5billion. Usually things you buy on the black market are MORE expensive than the legit counterparts, but here the items are LESS. Why is that? Could it be that the REAL VALUE of the product is actually nearer to ZERO? Who are the real criminals here, the people charging $4.50 per CD, or the people charging $25.00?

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Oh, you gotta love this:

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/...tid=141&tid=123

"Part of the music industry's recent price fixing settlement involves giving free CDs to public libraries. Although they are technically complying with the the letter of the law, they're abusing the spirit by giving the libraries large piles of crud. According to the Stevens Point Journal, '[the] Milwaukee Public Library received 1,235 copies of Whitney Houston's 1991 recording of "The Star-Spangled Banner," 188 copies of Michael Bolton's "Timeless," 375 of "Entertainment Weekly: The Greatest Hits 1971," and 104 copies of Will Smith's "Willennium."' The recording industry obviously wouldn't want to have libraries loaning out music that people might otherwise buy."

Ah yes, the same industry association that has already been found guilty of price fixing is complaining that consumers aren't paying their illegally high prices. Yah, right.....

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I can't wait until the recording industry kills itself.

Record industry slump eh?

I bet they didn't factor in things like:

Losing customers to indie labels,

Losing customers to recycle/second hand/pawn shops,

Losing customers due to a slumping economy,

Losing customers because 90% of their music is crap.

SO whatever % the RIAA claim they have lost due to piracy, we can probally take 1/4 off of that number. (Yeah, that was super biased and un-researched, but it is valid)

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