The Biggest Threat to Pirates? P2P

Filed in archive Legal , Society & Public Policy on April 2, 2007

Physical pirates who churn out counterfeit CDs and DVDs say that the P2P networks, the so-called digital pirates, are ruining their business.

TorrentFreak published a profile of Tony, a UK counterfeiter, who specialized in PC software and games and earned $2,000 per week. Tony sold his CDs at flea market where he sold out in three hours. In 2001 he expanded to a factory with a staff of 3 running CD duplicators 24 hours a day. In 2004 demand and business started to decline. In 2005 he closed the factory space and was forced to return the home bedroom with his wife and her sister copying CDs.

Tony said P2P was to blame for killing his business. "File-sharing, P2P - call it what you like. When you asked a customer why he wasn't buying anything, 9 times out of 10 it was 'BitTorrent this, LimeWire that'. Add that to the fact that huge numbers of PC users have burners and fast broadband and its obvious why I had to get out and earn a living another way. We had it good for a while but I don't think those days are coming back."