In the latest public relations strike in the war on copyright infringement, the music and film industries are sowing fears that content piracy, like drug trafficking before it, is being taken over by organized crime syndicates.
The problem is that the evidence — so far, at least — is lacking.
The mob-piracy meme began spreading in earnest last month, when the Recording Industry Association of America announced in a press release that piracy and organized crime were so intertwined that the entire counterfeit CD production business in the eastern half of the United States "is now dominated by organized criminal syndicates intent on monopolizing the illicit market."
Organized crime’s entree into the content business was inevitable given the economics, says Warner Music spokesman Craig Hoffman.
"The markup for a kilo of heroin is 200 percent," Hoffman says. "The markup for pirated CDs and DVDs is 800 percent."
"The business model is similar to dealing drugs," says Chuck Hausman, deputy director of anti-piracy for the Motion Picture Association of America. "The technology makes it easier — cheap burners, color laser printers and scanners (for high-quality disc art and packaging). It’s low cost to entry and they’re (CDs, DVDs) easy to hide."
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