China OKs Anti-Piracy Move

A Western music industry association said China last month allowed it to take a far-reaching step against compact disc piracy by tagging all legitimate compact discs made in the country. Pirated CDs are a key U.S. grievance in its smoldering trade war with China, with about 29 factories--some state-owned--pressing 75 million pirated discs a year, largely for export. Mike Edwards, director of operations at the London-based International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, said IFPI has marked every Chinese compact disc mold it knows of with an identification code, which will emerge on CDs. “We don’t know if we have engraved all the molds in the country, but we certainly have engraved a lot of molds,” he said. The system developed by IFPI enables CDs made legitimately under license to be tracked, so unmarked discs are suspect.