Representatives of the National Police Administration told participants at the annual meeting of the International Federation of Phonographic Industry last week that the police have stepped up their anti-piracy efforts in recent years and large numbers of pirated CDs have been seized.
A spokesman for police said yesterday that while Taiwan is branded as a key source of pirated goods, police authorities used last week's IFPI meeting to report on the effectiveness of their investigations and several raids conducted last year.
More than 200 delegates from IFPI branches as well as police and customs officials attended the meeting, which was held in Amsterdam from Sept. 25 to 27, according to the spokesman.
He said that the IFPI reported at the meeting that the global market for pirated music was worth US$4.3 billion in 2001 and music pirates are increasingly using the CD-R format.
In contrast to the large investment required to set up a CD manufacturing operation, pirate CD-R labs can be set up with only a few relatively inexpensive CD-R burners, according to the report.
The spokesman said that Taiwan's CD-R production accounted for two-thirds of overall world output.
As a result, the IFPI expects that Taiwan authorities can screen the list of blank CD-R buyers, especially those in South America, to prevent the use of Taiwan-produced blank CD-Rs by counterfeiters.
However, Taiwan's representatives said that the authorities cannot interfere with the operations of legitimate CD-R suppliers.
The representatives also said that those countries with CD-R piracy problems must bear some of the responsibility, according to the spokesman.
IFPI statistics showed that sales of pirated discs leapt by 48 percent last year, led by a massive surge in CD-R piracy.
Seizures of burners used to make CD-R copies have also been on the increase in Latin America, the US, Italy and Spain.
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