Leaders from the global music industry wrap up a two-day summit in Taipei today aimed at tackling the growing problem of music piracy.
The meeting comes as recorded music sales in the first half of this year plummeted. According to the summit's organizer, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), 40 percent of all CDs sold are pirated.
Piracy accounts for 9 percent of the global US$34 billion music industry, about US$4.3 billion per year.
This number compares to 28 percent in 2000, IFPI reports.
"Piracy is sometimes and mistakenly called a `victimless crime.' It is not. The economic losses due to piracy are enormous and are felt throughout the music value chain," the group said in its IFPI Music Piracy Report 2002.
"The victims include the artists whose creativity goes unrewarded, hundreds of millions in lost tax revenues, economies deprived of new investments, consumers who get less diversity and less choice, and record producers who are forced to reduce their artist rosters because it is impossible to compete against theft," it said.
The IFPI estimates that between 25 and 50 percent of music sold in Taiwan is pirated. Taiwan ranks with India, the Philippines and Thailand as a serious offender, beaten only by China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Pakistan as the worst violators in Asia.
Mandarin and Taiwanese artists staged a protest against piracy in a mass demonstration on April 4, asserting that the local music industry would be dead in five years if the trend continues.
Premier Yu Shyi-kun attended the protest and pledged to do more to save the industry.
Speaking yesterday at the IFPI event, Yu said, "In order to protect our culture, we need to protect intellectual property. The Executive Yuan intends to establish a police force specializing in intellectual property rights and also intends to increase the punishment for intellectual property rights violations."
Taiwan is the number one manufacturer of recordable compact disks, or CD-Rs, which are used to make pirated music and video disks.
"Pirating is one of the largest uses of CD-Rs," William Fong (方偉昌), an analyst at Primasia Securities Co, told the Taipei Times yesterday.
The cost of legitimate disks may be the reason for the proliferation of pirated disks.
"The price gap is still very large [between legal and pirated CDs]. For example, for one legitimate CD you can buy eight pirated ones," Fong said.
"To write or copy a CD is no problem -- you just need a computer and a CD writer, so it will be very difficult to tackle this problem," Fong said.
IFPI represents 1,500 record producers and distributors in 76 countries.
Its board of directors includes the heads of major and independent recording labels such as BMG, EMI, Sony Music, Universal and Warner.
IFPI holds summits biannually to discuss strategies for combatting piracy.
The Taipei meeting marks the second time the summit has been held in Asia.
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