James Delahunty
3 May 2006 16:27
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), a trade group representing some of the world's biggest record companies, has targeted pirates in 12 cities who sell counterfeit CDs and DVDs on the street. The cities include Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Chicago; Dallas; Houston; Los Angeles; Miami; New York; Philadelphia; Providence; San Diego and San Francisco. "We tried to narrow down the areas where we're going to focus, where we find the most piracy," said Brad Buckles of the RIAA.
The RIAA says it lost $1 billion in sales last year, of which about $300m has been credited to underground sales of illegally copied discs. The trade group said that over five million illegal discs were seized by Police last year and more than 3,300 arrests were made. In an FBI raid on a local music store outside Detroit in November, over 100 recording drives, 10,000 counterfeit CDs and 1,400 counterfeit DVDs were found.
The store had been selling new release music CDs for $5 each. About 95% of CDs seized contain Latin or Urban music tracks. The RIAA said that illegal Latin CDs are often produced not by cheap CD recorders, but by high quality commercial press equipment, making it very hard for consumers or even retailers to identify it as counterfeit. As a result, these CDs are commonly found being sold at full retail price in music stores.
Source:
USA Today