CD piracy costing music industry €5m a year

AT least €5 million is lost to the Irish music industry every year as a result of CD piracy, not including additional losses through unpaid VAT and other costings, according to the Irish music watchdog IRMA.

The association for recording artists said that door- to-door selling was proving to be a growing problem.

IRMA said the vast majority of people dealing in pirate CDs are Irish, while it is also a problem within the Travelling community and only occasionally with non-nationals.

No one has been jailed this year for CD piracy, but IRMA’s head of anti-piracy policy Sean Murtagh said 2005 had been its busiest year so far.

“It is too early to say but certainly, in terms of seizures, I would say they are up so far this year, due in large part to the extra resources we have handed on to the anti-piracy team.

“It is not only the seizure of CDs but also the equipment used to make them, especially the multiple tower burner, which looks like a computer CPU but actually has one master disk at the top and seven or eight blanks below it.”

A raid in Dublin two weeks ago found seven such burners running off 49 CDs every three minutes.

The fake CDs are almost entirely aimed at chart acts and are mostly sold at car boot sales and weekend markets, although IRMA said that door-to-door selling was a growing problem.

“You have guys calling around with a bag full of CDs and if they don’t have what you want, they can go and get it for you,” Mr Murtagh said.

“We are aware of this happening in housing estates in Dublin, but also in places like Cork, Limerick and Mullingar.”

He claimed that another manner of distribution is through companies, and while the quality of the CD is normally quite good, the proceeds from the sales end up in criminal hands.

“It is not a case of the ordinary decent criminal earning a few bob,” he said. “The money you are giving them goes up the chain and gets into the hands of organised criminals, criminal families and paramilitaries.”

Last month, at an Oireachtas meeting of the Joint Committee on Enterprise and Small Business, Justice Minister Michael McDowell suggested that the music industry consider offering rewards to those who expose door-to-door selling of illegal goods.