![]() It's damaging to the artist and the copyright holders." The Tech Behind the Bootleg Trade "One is counterfeit versions of actual albums and the other is counterfeit compilations that never existed. "There are two buckets of counterfeit products that exist," explains Burgess. On top of illegally pressed counterfeits and illegally sold reissues, other big contributors to the counterfeit trade are bogus best-of collections of copyrighted material being released by bootleggers. We've had instances where they've even worked from our LP's art, because we could even see the shape of where our logo was removed." Sometimes the grey marketers don't stop there-and instead use a reissue label's work as their own.Īccording to Millar, "If we do something legitimately that's public domain in the UK, people will take our CD and use it as their master for reissuing it on LP. Because it's illegal to distribute it here, but it's fine to resell them here." they basically put another link in the chain to make it legal to sell here. People will manufacture it in the UK, sell it to their distributor. "We were putting out one of our Johnny Cash records where somebody else was putting out the exact same record on the exact same date, but they were 'importing' it from the UK, where it was in the public domain. Jay Millar, general manager of reissue specialists Sundazed Records, shows how such a record could be illegally sold in the US-to the detriment of local, law-abiding labels. Say, for example, an artists' oldest releases have entered the public domain in one country but not in the US. The other element thrown into the mix is grey-market imports-situations wherein the records themselves are legit and licensed but are being sold outside approved distribution networks. ![]() I know recently the RIAA did a buy of box sets and 100 percent of the box sets they bought were counterfeit." Grey Marketers and Best-Of Bootleggers ![]() ![]() "You could buy from a legitimate retailer and get a counterfeit product," Burgess says, or even vice versa. (An Amazon spokesperson says this is incorrect.) I think it's somewhere in the 11 percent range, which is serious."īurgess explains that part of the problem with Amazon is that everything goes into one bin, including legitimate releases from the labels and product from third-party "Fulfilled By Amazon" sellers. "Amazon took steps to curb it, and the counterfeiting dropped down to a very low percentage. "We worked in conjunction with the RIAA," Burgess says. Richard James Burgess, A2IM president and CEO, says it worked for a bit. Some years back, seeing a rise in counterfeiting coming largely from Russia and China, both the Recording Industry Association of America and the American Association of Independent Music -a trade group representing indie labels-worked with Amazon to try to combat the issue. But it's a problem that affects the world's indie labels as much as it does the majors. "I guarantee that if you look at the Hot 100 on Billboard, somewhere in this world there's a counterfeit copy of every one of them," says Bruce Iglauer, founder and CEO of renowned blues label Alligator Records. We work hard to combat bad actors that attempt to abuse our systems and as a result, more than 99.9% of all Amazon page views by our customers landed on pages that did not receive a notice of potential counterfeit infringement." In response, an Amazon spokesperson says, "Amazon strictly prohibits the sale of counterfeit products. Through conversations with record labels and industry watchdogs, it's safe to say that the practice of counterfeiting CDs and records is widespread. In October, Tommy Boy Records grabbed headlines by saying they saw vinyl records for sale on Amazon that the label had never pressed to wax. As if record labels didn't have enough worries these days, the perennial problem of counterfeiting has recently been shown to be as active an issue as ever.Īn RIAA study of the phenomenon conducted this summer found that 25% of CDs fulfilled by Amazon were illegal copies, as reported by DJ Mag and other outlets.
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