Riaa Piracy Stats Show New-tech Threat Online Dangers Looming Large, As Cassette Concerns Lessen

WASHINGTON, D.C.--There's good and bad news on the music piracy front: Cassette piracy has dropped 80% over the past five years, but CD piracy and Internet theft are on the rise, according to 1997 year-end statistics released March 4 by the Recording Industry Assn. of America (RIAA).
According to the association, cassette seizures dropped from 1.07 million in 1996 to 411,719 last year. Counterfeit and pirate CD seizures also dropped almost in half, from 208,797 to 128,798. But countering that positive news, RIAA officials say the specter of possible large-scale digital piracy has begun to assert itself.
The new threat is due to two major factors: pirates' use of increasingly inexpensive CD-Recordable hardware and the illegal importation of bogus product from CD plants overseas.
The 1997 stats show that on the enforcement-action front, search warrants, consent searches, and arrests and indictments were at about the same level as in 1996. Site seizures, however, were up from 134 to 170, and piracy-related guilty pleas and convictions almost doubled, from 80 in 1996 to 150 in 1997.
On the bootleg front, CD seizures command the most attention; while down from 1,261,961 in 1996 to 807,397 last year, the 1997 figure is still 10 times the amount confiscated in '95 and 300 times the amount seized in '94.
Most of the pirate and bootleg CDs, the RIAA said, are showing up at flea markets and in general-merchandise stores.
The RIAA directed 80% of its anti-piracy resources last year to combat the evolving forms of CD piracy and to protect copyrighted sound recordings in cyberspace.
The Internet has become especially ripe for pirates. "The potential harm to copyright owners is exponentially greater than traditional acts of piracy," warns Steve D'Onofrio, RIAA executive VP and director of anti-piracy.
During the second half of the year, for example, the RIAA began to see an alarming trend--Internet pirates placing music from new albums by major artists such as Eric Clapton, Pearl Jam, Madonna, and others online before their official release dates. Once on the World Wide Web, the posted sound files can be accessed by untold numbers of computer users.
The RIAA began working with artists and managers as well as record labels to notify site operators and companies operating the servers about the legal implications of placing unauthorized recordings online. In many cases, the sound files were removed "within minutes," according to the RIAA.
Staying ahead of technologically advanced Internet pirates, D'Onofrio says, "presents a greater challenge than ever before."
Due to this threat, the RIAA has beefed up its multi-pronged approach by expanding its staff to include Internet specialists. It's also utilizing an automated "Web crawler" to electronically scan the Internet for potentially unauthorized uses of music.
Last year, the RIAA sent out copyright infringement notifications to hundreds of Web sites; it reported that the majority were promptly shut down. A few remaining sites are seeking proper licensing or editing out unlicensed recordings.
Addressing the growing problem of music archive sites on university servers--sites on which large numbers of audio files are posted for download--the RIAA initiated a campaign to inform university administrators and students about the legal implications of copyright infringement, which can include civil and criminal actions involving fines and even jail terms.

INTERNET FREE-FOR-ALL?
D'Onofrio is also looking ahead to the industry's biggest worry--that the Internet could soon be a free-for-all for downloading sound recordings. The RIAA is currently allocating resources to educate Internet users, but D'Onofrio adds: "We will also continue to establish legal [court] precedents before the technologies advance to the point that large-scale online piracy runs rampant."

RECORDABLE CD
The RIAA, with help from law enforcement, has also begun confiscating illicit recordings made with the CD-Recordable format. Only 355 such bootleg discs and 87 counterfeit/pirate discs were nabbed in 1997, but that year marked their first appearance in the marketplace.