With the introduction of Napster over a decade ago, the recording industry began to stumble and has basically never recovered. Recording artists found that their music was being stolen and illegally traded at an alarming rate. Many artists were shocked to find the problem was so pervasive that their music was appearing on line before it had even been officially released.
The average consumer didn’t see trading music with thousands of others on line as stealing. Yet it is this very trading that has cost artists and the recording industry billions of dollars. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which accounts for the distribution of approximately 85% of all legally sold recorded music in the United States, seems to be perpetually 2 steps behind the pirates.
The amount of theft and illegal peer-to-peer (P2P) piracy is higher than ever, creating losses in the billions to recording artists and content owners. The struggle is identifying the pirate or infringer so that action can be taken against them. There are several anti-piracy companies available whose focus is solely on monitoring the internet, identifying those stealing the copyrighted music content and providing the recording artist and content owners with the means to take action against the pirates.
Copyright Enforcement Group or CEG (www.ceg-intl.com) provides one of the best services we’ve seen. CEG’s models are quite a bit different from the other anti-piracy companies. They focus on the clients needs rather than trying to make the clients fit into a pre-defined model. There is even a very popular monetization model available that is at no charge to the content owner. Copyright Enforcement Group is currently monitoring over 25,000 copyrighted pieces of content for their clients and has in-house technical, legal and copyright experts who are available to help the recording artist/content owner fight online piracy.
