AfterDawn: News

RIAA targeted street pirates in 12 cities

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

Written by: James Delahunty @ 3 May 2006 16:27

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• 14 comments

• jmaestro

  Why doesn't the RIAA ban Latin Music? It seems reasonable, and would cut 95% of piracy. I shouldn't speak facetiously; the RIAA might actually think this is a good idea.
  
  When the RIAA company loses $1billion in sales, what percentage of this loss is due to s****y music, substitute products (videogames/films), and alternative entertainment.
  
  Anyone who says that free music will inhibit creativity has never heard of Beethoven or Bach. Great artists, Picasso, Goya, and Beethoven created because they loved the product, they were driven by intrinsic motivation, not extrinsically toward by financial gain. I support making money for profit, but not at the expense of taking away individual rights (*cough* DRM).
  
  Hmmmm, Ashley Simpson or Wagner, who was more creative?
  
  I guess I’m preaching to the converted here, oh well.
  

  4.5.2006 00:09 #1

• borhan9

  Well crappy music should not be sold at a high price in the first place and we wont make the copies.
  
  and I still find $A30 still too much for a disc and that an avg price sometimes its more...
  
  I reckon they shouldf not give record deals to every tom disck and harry out there to make music soo then we wouldnt do wat we are doin if good music is out there i am willing to spend my $$ on it.
  
  But for a few yrs well ever since 2000 there has not been anything good.

  4.5.2006 02:14 #2

• mystic

  if it was cheaper to buy the finished product (cd or dvd) then no one would copy it.... why not cut the revenue to the gold lined pockets of the music companies and make a cheaper format for play back instead they want to add rootkits and other damaging software to stop the theives well raising prices will only drive more people to copy and including harmful soft ware to cds and dvds will only make people more pissed off "so Hey You The RIAA listion up if you dont want to seen as a vilian stop actting as one how about you take all that money your wasting ang follow along: 1st : have the artist accually crate a good album not 2 good songs and filler. 2nd : lower the cost of the cds to 8.00 this alows you to sell more and not have to worry about the downloader.(most do it because you charge to much) 3rd : and finally knock off with the fanfair over who you caught unless it was an ellected official using tax payers bought equipment . and while your at it how about leaving the dead relatives out of your lawsuets it makes you look really dumb. well if you take any of this advice the world will hear you and see you as someone who tried to be fair unlike how we feel about you now, where we feel we have to lock up our children and hide them from you. the RIAA should have came up with ITUNES befor Apple and you'd be making all that money , but you didnt and your loss has made you out to be a greedy ass.(association) shoulda woulda coulda but you didnt....

  4.5.2006 05:03 #3

• jmaestro

  How would society and the media react if the RIAA suddenly decided that the prices of CDs would all of a sudden be $200? Would people think they were too expensive? How would they react? Would CD copying be justified?

  4.5.2006 05:40 #4

• coolbrz

  First off, if you are that much of a dumb ass to sell pirated cd's or DVD's on the street, then you deserve to be caught.

  4.5.2006 13:00 #5

• hot_ice

  Oh! Come on, that's just a load of hot horse manure. Seriously now, 1 Billion lost! Oh! Really, that's funny, for money to be lost, someone has to actually be interested in buying your products!!
  
  LOOLOLL
  
  They havent lost anything, let them do what they do best, waste their time seizing crap that no one will buy in the first place.

  4.5.2006 13:11 #6

• sisph

  "How would society and the media react if the RIAA suddenly decided that the prices of CDs would all of a sudden be $200? Would people think they were too expensive? How would they react? Would CD copying be justified?"
  
  Well, why isn't it justifiable now? What difference should it make if you're being charged 200 or 2000 dollars when you know off the bat that the money you're paying is going more towards the record executives that produce the music than to the artists who create it? What should the differnce be if you just pay 20 dollars? The more you pay the more the artist can get but just because it gets more expensive doesn't justify the fact that percentage wise you're still paying for suits than artists.
  
  I really wouldn't mind paying the artist directly for an mp3 priced at their scale than paying 99cents to a company that gyps the artists. The same comes with CDs. I'd rather pay for an artist who burns their own music than a company that produces one knowing they lose out on it.
  
  This was a problem say thirty years ago when media was expensive and hard to create but now in the fully digital age hard media can be a thing of the past. It really isn't about CDs or DVDs as much as its about information and who gets to own or use it.

  4.5.2006 21:28 #7

• m_towell

  Quote:The RIAA says it lost $1 billion in sales last yearOk, so let's assume that RIAA manages to stamp out all piracy (long shot, but let's assume anyway.) Their profits are now $1 billion more than before.
  
  How much of that will they use to reduce the price of CDs?
  
  I bet you the price of CDs would not go down by one cent.
  
  So why should we stop pirating CDs?

  4.5.2006 22:07 #8

• ChiefBrdy

  That billion dollar in sales figure is very fuzzy math. Probably 3/4 of the people who spent $5 on the street for them would never pay retail resulting in sales that would have never occured anyway. That brings the actual loss in sales to about 250 million. Figuring RIAA's profit on each unit is about 75%, leaving them with the cost of manufacturing the disks at 25%, they now've only lost 187.5 million. Taking it one step further. The billion dollars spent on the street generated a billion dollars into the free market economy. Say 25% of that money was spent on retail CD's and DVD's. RIAA's loss is now down to 140.6 million. On that profit, they would have to pay Uncle Sam 33%. Leaving them with an actual loss of 94.2 million in sales, NOT 1 billion!
  
  Someone ought to sue those parasitic scumbags for false reporting.

  5.5.2006 03:05 #9

• hot_ice

  Chfbrady
  
  I disagree with you, simply because this is speculation nothing more. This isn't tangible losses. It doesn't affect the company directly, it just affects the possibility of extra earning and profit.
  
  Their real loss, is a Big 0$. And that's a fact.

  6.5.2006 10:46 #10

• ChiefBrdy

  hot_ice,
  
  Their loss being $0 is technically correct. But it's also fuzzy math. Losing the possibility of extra earning and profit does directly affect companies. Supply and demand. As the supply of pirated DVD's and CD's go up. The demand for retail disks is reduced. Resulting in less retail sales, larger advertising expendetures, etc.
  
  
  

  "Is that 3 thousand dollar bounty on the shark in cash or check?"
  
  "We can do it the easy way...Or we can do it the REAL easy way."

  6.5.2006 11:28 #11

• hot_ice

  This is true to a certain extent, however, they are speaking in terms of potential sales and potential profits, and its important to emphasize these views in terms of expected projections, rather than direct losses.
  
  If these companies margin of profits would not increase, investors would pull out their money, and the company would go bankrupt eventually. However, the investors are still there, therefore indicating that profit and growth are still present within the company regardless of piracy.
  
  Piracy affects larger margin profits, but on a speculatorial estimation, and the numbers signaled as losses aren't accurate at all.
  
  One exception to this is the following golden rule, who would buy and who wouldn't. Those who buy the pirated goods at lower prices but would buy them at the original pricing if the pirated good wasn't available, can be considered as a loss. However, those who had no intention to buy isn't considered as a loss at all.
  
  Therefore, there is a strict divide between the two and what's important here would be the percentage of people who would consider buying the product and those who wouldn't.
  
  So the movie industry may claim we lost a total of 60 billion dollars for example, but is that number considering all the variables? No, absolutely not.
  
  I personally think, their loss amounts to 1/60 or 1/100 of what they claim. How can we know for sure? We can't, however, I know B.S. when I see it.

  6.5.2006 20:11 #12

• ChiefBrdy

  Basically you just repeated what I said in my OP.
  

  "Is that 3 thousand dollar bounty on the shark in cash or check?"
  
  "We can do it the easy way...Or we can do it the REAL easy way."

  6.5.2006 20:45 #13

• hot_ice

  Not really. You fiddled with fictional numbers, I on the other hand didn't attach any numbers safe for the "big zero" and chose not to delve in speculation.
  
  You spoke about supply and demand, and I simply added to that notion by mentioning investors.
  
  You know, this is a dialogue, not who said what first, or who repeated what etc.

  7.5.2006 10:55 #14