A third of all compact discs sold are pirated, says study

ONE in three compact discs sold worldwide last year was pirated, with sales totalling $4.6 billion (€3.8bn), an industry group said yesterday.

In a record 31 countries, fake recordings now outsell legal ones, the International Federation of Phonographic Industries said in its annual report.

The bootleg industry is growing in Latin America, India, the Middle East and eastern Europe, it said, although some countries are cracking down on copyright theft by shutting down illegal recording facilities. A record number of them - with annual capacity for 380 million discs - were knocked out of action last year, the study said.

The London-based federation said it was releasing the report in Madrid because Spain is Europe’s worst culprit when it comes to pirating music. In Spain, bootleggers selling pirated CDs and DVDs are common sights on the street.

The federation named Spain and nine other countries as priorities: Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Paraguay, Russia and Ukraine. “The music industry fights piracy because if it did not, the music industry would quite simply not exist,” IFPI chairman John Kennedy wrote in the report.

It called intellectual property “a jewel worth protecting”, saying copyright industries account for 5% of GDP of the US and European economies. Piracy jeopardises jobs, economic growth and innovation and it saps tax revenue, the group said.

“It is no longer acceptable for governments and individuals to turn a blind eye or to regard piracy as merely a small irritation to society,” he added.

The value of the world pirate market for music is equal to the legitimate markets of Britain, the Netherlands and Spain combined, the report said. Globally, it said 1.2 billion pirated music discs were sold in 2004, 34% of all sales. Musical piracy grew 2% in 2004, the smallest increase in five years. But the number of pirated discs is still double that sold in 2000. In Paraguay, 99% of CDs sold are bootleg, the study said. China is the world’s largest pirate market, with an 85% bootleg rate.