Another major area of intellectual copyright theft is illegal Compact Disc/DVD replication and sales. The interdiction of this activity is essentially a law enforcement activity and is taking place day-in and day-out around the world. Accordingly, it is not the focus of this site. We do want to note however that in the music business, Compact Disc sales are plummeting and online sales are increasing at double-digit annual rates. While Compact Disc sales are still the dominate medium for the sale of music, the lines are expected to cross in 20101.
The day Compact Discs become extinct may not be too many years off. This may sound strange, but, as far as we are concerned, the sooner the Compact Disc is dead the better!! If we block all of the downloading sites, interdict music being shared via email or other file transfer methods, AND the Compact Disc is dead, most music piracy will be stamped out. Some explanation may be in order. As floppy disk drives died when the floppy disk was supplanted by Compact Disc drives, so will Compact Disc players die when the only option to obtain a digital music or movie or TV show is via legal downloads. At that point, the only way to "game the system" and "file share" will be via thumb drive or hard drive and these are relatively expensive options (compared to the cost of a Compact Disc). While we may never be able to shut down 100% of illegal file sharing, blocking web sites that are the sources of downloads and interdicting file sharing via email or other file transfer protocols will all but stamp out intellectual property theft.
