Company Town : Association Announces War on Music Piracy in Russia : Commerce: Recording industry trade group wants to protect Russian firms and lure Western labels to the market.

Every weekend, hundreds of Russian music fans flock to Moscow’s Fili Park to shop for audio recordings in a huge, open-air market. Every kind of music, from Rachmaninoff to the Rolling Stones and even brand-new American releases, can be found on the sellers’ rickety tables.

There’s just one catch: Nearly every album, cassette and compact disc is pirated.

To combat the bootlegging that is strangling Russia’s legitimate music business and infuriating Western studios and trade associations, a powerful international recording industry association declared war Monday on audio piracy in Russia.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, which represents more than 1,000 record companies worldwide, hopes to protect Russian recording firms and lure Western companies reluctant to set up shop here lest their recordings, too, be sold on the black market.

The federation’s new Moscow office will lobby for stronger anti-piracy laws and tougher prosecution of suspected bootleggers “so that producers in other parts of the world, including California, will be able to think about this market as one to invest in,” said Nicholas Garnett, the group’s general director.

The federation plans to forge links with such Russian law enforcement agencies as the Interior Ministry, the former KGB and the customs service, helping them launch a coordinated attack against bootlegging.

“If the government allows (pirating) to happen, it sends the wrong signal to companies ready to invest,” Garnett said. “Getting your intellectual property laws, your copyrights, your trademarks, your patents in place and properly enforced is a very important factor in securing foreign investment.”

Russia’s problem with audio piracy is massive, Garnett said, noting: “You’re talking 70%, 80%, 90% pirated (recordings) in some kinds of repertoire. Most of the international market here is pirated.”

By comparison, the federation estimates that in the United States, only about 4% of recordings sold are pirated.

Although Russian artists and producers have complained bitterly about the illegal production and import of CDs and cassettes, few concrete steps have been taken until now to fight it. In the past two years, the Russian Parliament has passed several intellectual property protection laws, but enforcement remains sketchy.

The federation plans to work with the newly formed Russian Phonographic Assn., which represents 18 Russian recording houses, including London-based PolyGram Records and Melodiya, once the Soviet Union’s only record producer.

Garnett acknowledges it won’t be easy to stem the tide of illegal recordings that stream from China, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Belarus and elsewhere in the former Soviet Union. “It’s very complicated, and in some ways a very dangerous situation,” he said, alluding to the organized-crime faction believed to be taking a cut from the lucrative smuggling business.

Irina Savelyeva, head of the federation’s Moscow office, said that “many other crimes can be tied in to pirating--racketeering, money laundering.”

Record company executives greeted the announcement warmly.

“I have 10 or 20 copies of different albums of ours from all over the world, made illegally from CDs or music cassettes,” said Vladimir Kozlov, owner of Moscow’s ZeKo records. “This organization has the money and the links to solve any problem in this area.”

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