The IFPI hectors 10 national governments.

But it doesn’t say if it plans to start legal and enforcement actions against Sony Corp or other makers of high volume and ‘consumer’ burners and associated technologies and media which make “music disc piracy” possible.

As half of the new Sony BMG company, Sony is one of the Big Four labels which fund the IFPI and provide it with its instructions.

“Seizures of industrial-scale CD-making equipment soared in the year, ” says the IFPI. But small-time crooks can do very well with one or more cheap store-bought burners.

Music piracy remains a $4.5 billion illegal business “driven by organised crime, government apathy and corruption,” says the IFPI.

In a report which includes ten “priority” countries “named for government action,” the organization says global sales of illegal music discs rose 4% in 2003 and the global average piracy rate increased to a record 35%.

“The ratio of illegal to legal CDs sold continues to increase: in 2000, one in five CDs sold worldwide was a pirate copy; in 2003 the ratio was one in three, and rising,” it states.

Through IFPI chairman and ceo Jay Berman, the Big Four record labels tell governments – especially Brazil, China, Mexico, Pakistan, Paraguay, Russia, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand and Ukraine – to “act decisively against the problem”. This means “proper enforcement, deterrent sentences against pirates, effective regulation of disc manufacturing and, above all, the political will to make sure real change happens.”

The ten countries are, “in IFPI’s view,” failing to “protect and enforce intellectual property rights and tackle unacceptable levels of piracy”.

China has the largest pirate market (worth just under US$600 million) and Russia, home to a US$330 million pirate market and a massive international exporter of pirate CDs to some 30 countries, says the IFPI, going on to highlight raids in which national police forces acted for the Big Four labels.

Pakistan has entered the list of top 10 for the first time and, “Mexico and Brazil also feature prominently as countries that were until recently among the world’s top 10 largest legitimate music markets but whose music industry, artists and workforce have been decimated by CD-R piracy,” says the IFPI, specifying “actions involving teams of investigators from IFPI and its affiliates, including:

• A lengthy investigation by police and IFPI investigators in Athens lead to the seizure of 200,000 discs and 123 CD-R burners and the break-up of an alleged illegal immigration ring in September 2003
• Police in Italy dismantled a major organised crime ring in Naples when 50 Fiscal Police raided six undercover music, film and software disc burning laboratories in October 2003. 500 burners were seized and nine people arrested.
• Mexican police were involved in violent clashes with criminal gangs in Mexico City’s notorious Tepito market in a raid which netted hundreds of thousands of discs and equipment along with firearms and illegal drugs. A four-hour confrontation led to 39 arrests.

And, “A huge seizure in Peru involving 1,000 police officers netted no fewer than 1 million burned CD-R discs in the famous ‘Hueco’ flea market. During the operation over 400 stands were raided and 10 people were arrested.”

There’s no mention of the tremendous disruption these IFPI raids must have caused legitimate businesses, or of similar reports of IFPI / National police “actions” in China, Russia or Pakistan.

Nor did the IFPI report give details of how many people were killed and/or injured during these Big Music inspired raids, including the one in Mexico in which police levelled loaded (presumably) rifles.

World Black Markets
Organized gangss selling counterfeits, duplicates and cracked software on world black markets are without doubt responsible for dips in corporate profit charts. The entertainment industry routinely manipulates governments and enforcement agencies claiming massive losses due to piracy and online file sharing, usually speaking of the two in the same breath.

Yet the now famous Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf paper found file sharing has no measurable effect on music sales.

“Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero, despite rather precise estimates,” says The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales – An Empirical Analysis. “Moreover, these estimates are of moderate economic significance and are inconsistent with claims that file sharing is the primary reason for the recent decline in music sales.”

The same no doubt applies to movies.

Instead of trying to kill p2p, the industry could be using it to market and distribute movies, music and software online at very little cost. This would dramatically cut down on the amount of physical product available to ‘pirates,’ slash overhead and bring alienated consumers back into the fold.

It wouldn’t eliminate counterfeits, but it would significantly reduce their proliferation.

It’s long gone time that the entertainment industy stopped using the IFPI and other pseudo-cop units to bludgeon ‘consumers’ into buying ‘product’.

File sharing is here to stay, but it can be Hollywood’s friend instead of its enemy.