About four months ago, Maiden tripan album of Iron Maiden radio recordings from the 1980s, which appeared for sale on the Coda Records website without the famous metal band's permission. Andrew Wyllie, Iron Maiden's head of business affairs, contacted the song's record labels, BMG and Warner Music, for help in persuading the UK retailer to remove the unauthorized album – without, he says, success. His next call went to Corsearch.
The 75-year-old brand protection company, which fights bootleggers using artificial intelligence, image-matching software and automated takedown notices on retail sites such as Amazon, Etsy and eBay, quickly ended the sale of Maiden trip and social media ads for it and was “more effective at getting those records off our record label,” Wyllie says. “They have definitely affected the bottom line.”
(A Coda spokesperson says the store has been removed Maiden trip after listening to Iron Maiden, the process was “very simple” and “we're happy to remove things if there's a problem.”)
For a long time, artists, managers, labels and merchandise companies likened online bootleg sales to a game of Whac-A-Mole: When lawyers send cease-and-desist notices to unauthorized merchandise retailers, the seller reappears elsewhere. But in recent years, companies like Corsearch and rival CounterFind have used more sophisticated methods to protect their music-business clients. They take down tens of thousands of online listings each month, hire district attorneys to invoke the US trademark statute known as the Lanham Act and prosecute infringers.
“It's scientific, it's strategic, and there are solutions,” he says Eric Cohen, founder of TZU Strategies, which works with Corsearch and claims to have removed 55,000 fake listings on behalf of top music stars. Using “robust” technology, he says, “we are able to connect the vast majority of counterfeiters who use multiple accounts selling on multiple platforms in multiple ways.”
Corsearch has 450 employees and 5,000 customers, including artists and music companies. “We're working with law enforcement that we've had relationships with for 15 years,” VP of Enforcement Joe Cherayath says.
Dallas-based CounterFind is more of a “boutique” company, says co-founder and head of business development Rachel Aronson. In 2017, the founders were working with Linkin Park when they were frontmen Chester Bennington died and, as Aronson recalls, “An insane amount of fake merchandise was popping up everywhere.” CounterFind removed “millions of dollars in counterfeit products from the market in one weekend,” he says.
Since then, CounterFind has expanded to 30 employees and works with Bravado, the merchandising company owned by Universal Music Group (UMG) that represents Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish and dozens of other artists. “The majority of these large counterfeiters work from their couches overseas and create print-to-order products,” says Aronson.
Music counterfeiting and falsification is a big deal. Last year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized nearly $2.8 billion in copyright-infringing goods shipped from countries such as China, Turkey and Canada. Jeff Jambol, whose company, JAM Inc., manages the estates of The Doors, Janis Joplin and others, estimates that these unauthorized sellers cost artists about $20,000 to $50,000 for every $1 million in annual T-shirt sales. “It's kind of endless,” says Rick Sales, longtime manager of Slayer, Ghost, Mastodon and others. “It's like, 'How long is a piece of string?'
President of Bravado, Matt Young, adds that Counterfind and Universal Music's internal copyright protection team has been “proactive,” and UMG's artists and executives appreciate the company's reports showing all takedowns of unauthorized material online. But “it's kind of like Whac-A-Mole,” he says: Amazon has been “great” at strengthening its protocols to combat bootleggers, but “these markets don't really care where that business is coming from,” and “If Google any artist, the first lot of things you'll see would be pirated products.”
Representatives for Corsearch and CounterFind disagree. Aronson describes a repeat offender who “basically scraped and copied an artist's entire merchandise website” using a website address with one letter removed from the official URL. After months of reporting the bootlegger through its many hosting providers, CounterFind used the Lanham Act to permanently take down the site and domain. In April, Corsearch worked with police in China to raid warehouses belonging to alleged online counterfeiter Pandabuy and seized millions of packages that were due to be shipped to customers. “The key point,” says Cherayath, “is not to cease and desist – that's just one of the mechanisms in the enforcement strategy.”
In addition to scouring the internet for unauthorized merchandise sellers and providing the band with data on the whereabouts of counterfeiters, Corsearch helps Iron Maiden distinguish which t-shirt manufacturers are bootleg businesses and which are harmless fans designing the their own clothes for a few extra dollars. The Corsearch system also allows band management to respond to fan tips and identify bootleggers and counterfeiters based on complaints — such as Facebook scammers who promise VIP tickets and backstage access with a $500 click.
“It is the bane of my life. As soon as we announce a tour, online bootleggers have already stolen the image from a tour poster and put it on a t-shirt in five minutes,” says Wyllie. “The Corsearch system almost pays for itself. You don't need to use local lawyers and you get to the root of the problem very quickly.”
A version of this story appears in the June 8, 2024, issue Advertising sign.
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/pro/companies-trying-end-online-counterfeit-merch-business-meet/