Crackdown Launched on Pirating

The recording industry is stepping up its anti-piracy efforts during the holiday season, trying to clamp down on flea markets in Los Angeles and New York as well as bootleggers at colleges and on the Internet.

Meanwhile, representatives from six higher-education trade associations have agreed to form task forces to study anti-piracy policies and technologies. The groups will be advised by the Recording Industry Assn. of America, the Motion Picture Assn. of America and other copyright holders eager to stem the flow of pirated material over high-speed college networks.

The RIAA announced Wednesday a series of enforcement efforts, including what it said was the largest seizure ever of CD-duplicating equipment. The seizure, made Monday in Queens, N.Y., by the Secret Service, disabled an operation that supplied an estimated 6 million pirated CDs each year to bootleggers, the RIAA said.

Additional targets include street vendors and other common outlets for pirated CDs in New York and California, particularly those on Santee Alley in downtown Los Angeles.

As for online piracy, RIAA President Cary Sherman said the organization is working more aggressively to block songs from being distributed on the Internet before they’re officially released.

It also recently started sending more notices to colleges and universities, asking them to stop specific users on campus from pirating music on file-sharing networks, Sherman said.

On Tuesday, representatives of the six academic groups met with the RIAA and the MPAA and agreed to form three task forces related to intellectual property. In addition to recommending policies and technologies to address piracy, representatives from colleges and universities plan to start a dialogue with copyright holders on fair use and other legal issues, Sherman said.