Riaa Piracy Picture Mixed

WASHINGTON, D.C.‹Cassette piracy in the U.S. is down for the fifth straight year, but CD, CD-R, and Internet piracy is on the rise. So state the 1998 year-end anti-piracy statistics released April 6 by the Recording Industry Assn. of America (RIAA) (BillboardBulletin, April 7).
The trade group is responding to the new digital challenge with triple-threat education programs, enforcement actions, and legislation.
For example, to inform or remind the many college-campus music downloaders that unauthorized use of copyrighted music via the Internet is against the law, the RIAA began last year what it calls its Soundbyting Campaign, a full-scale artist/company rights campaign involving more than 200 college campuses.
As a result, the number of educational or warning letters sent to university-related addresses dropped from 60% to 40% of the total.
The RIAA has also sent out thousands of warning and cease-and-desist orders to owners of music sites and initiated or already settled five important lawsuits against online music-site pirates last year.
The RIAA also worked throughout the year providing CD plants with educational and instructional tools to spot bogus orders from pirates. The program snagged orders from customers planning to distribute and sell unauthorized music, as well as more than 1.5 million illegal CDs already manufactured, many destined for international markets.
The anti-piracy unit at the RIAA also helped with the passage of a California Optical Disc Identifier bill at the beginning of the year, which will help curtail piracy.
While cassette piracy continued to drop‹with seizures of counterfeit and pirated cassettes dropping from 411,719 to 359,426‹CD-R piracy at flea markets and street corners is booming.
The RIAA began reporting statistics on counterfeit, pirate, and bootleg CD-R seizures last year. The number skyrocketed from 442 in 1997 to 103,971 in 1998, piracy fueled by an influx of "inexpensive CD-R hardware and blank discs," says Frank Creighton, RIAA senior VP and director of anti-piracy.
The midyear RIAA anti-piracy report had shown that CD-R piracy was on the rise (Billboard, Sept. 5, 1998).
Creighton says the RIAA will apply "the successful investigative tactics and enforcement efforts used to combat cassette piracy" to the new problem. He points out that one reason for the relatively low seizure rate is the new "burn-on-demand" nature of manufacturing bogus material.
Arrests and indictments by local authorities for pirated and bootleg product were up from 211 in '97 to 324 last year. Guilty pleas and convictions were also up, from 150 to 204, as were piracy-related judgments and settlements, from six to 10.
In related news, the RIAA also announced it had obtained a $2.25 million, pre-litigation piracy settlement from a CD plant, Kao Infosystems Co. of Plymouth, Mass., following allegations of copyright infringement for mastering hundreds of mostly Latin-market sound recordings without authorization. The company, no longer in the CD mastering business, claims to have not known that the orders for the masters were unauthorized.
Last year, the RIAA took action against Quixote, a replication firm, and got a $4 million settlement, the largest so far against illegal CD manufacturing and mastering outfits (Billboard, June 6, 1998).