Intellectual Property Theft and Organized Crime: The Case of Film Piracy 1

Over the past two decades, the industry associations charged with protecting intellectual property industries have aggressively campaigned against intellectual property theft. As part of this campaign, these associations routinely claim that organized crime is a main contributor to the theft of billions of dollars of intellectual property. Their campaigns have been quite successful. High profile investigations of criminal enterprises engaged in these illegal activities have occurred around the world at an ever-increasing rate, resulting in hundreds of thousands of counterfeit items being seized on an annual basis.