The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has welcomed the latest edition of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) Notorious Markets Report on Tuesday (Jan. 30), which provides an annual review of various forms of copyright infringement, including digital music piracy.
Pirating digital music isn't at the forefront of many listeners' minds in the age of streaming. Even the industry itself has focused more of its recent frustration on streaming fraud and the popularity of rain sounds, at least in the public comments made over the last year.
However, global music piracy increased in 2022, according to a March 2023 report by MUSOa British technology company, which tracked over 15 billion visits to music piracy sites that year.
The new USTR report highlighted a handful of sites — including 1337X, Krakenfiles, Rapidgator and Ssyoutube — where people go to stream or download songs illegally. “Ssyoutube is the most popular YouTube copy site worldwide, with over 343 million visitors as of April 2023 alone,” USTR noted in one example.
“We appreciate the report's prioritization of thefts that target the music community, such as ripping,” he said. George Yorkthe RIAA's senior vice president of international policy, in a statement.
Overall, music is less of a concern in this year's USTR report than in 2023. The main focus of the document is the “potential health and safety risks posed by counterfeit brand products.”
The USTR was encouraged that “this year many e-commerce and social commerce platforms took steady steps toward initiating additional anti-counterfeiting practices and adapting to new circumvention techniques used by counterfeiters.”
“Many platforms made public submissions outlining the implementation of new anti-counterfeiting tools, including publishing educational campaigns, increasing identity verification requirements, and implementing faster and more transparent notification and takedown processes,” the report continues. “Additionally, several platforms have invested in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies as a way to quickly scale and adapt traditional anti-counterfeiting measures such as text and image screening.”
The RIAA had asked the USTR to emphasize another aspect of artificial intelligence, according to comments was submitted in October, although it was ultimately not included in the report.
At the time, the RIAA noted that “the year 2023 has seen an explosion of unauthorized AI voice cloning services that violate not only the rights of the artists whose voices are cloned, but also the rights of those who own the recordings in each underlying musical. dance floor. This has led to an explosion of unauthorized derivative works of our members' recordings that harm recording artists and copyright holders.”
In a statement following USTR's latest release, York “urges[d] the agency will look closely in the future to emerging piracy challenges presented by artificial intelligence, including the widespread illegal use of copyrighted recordings and artist names, images and likenesses to create invasive and illegal voice clones and fakes.
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/business/streaming/music-film-tv-piracy-problem-new-report-1235593372/
