Piracy, technology and global illicit trade

October 26, 2006 Prostitution is claimed to be the world's oldest profession but in our book piracy would be a legitimate contender for the oldest profession and statistics show it is still a highly profitable and viable profession. One of our favourite blogs, slashdot, contained the following post today - "The music, movie, and software cartels claim 'piracy' is a Number One problem not only for themselves, but for the world as a whole and so successful are their continuing dis- and misinformation propaganda campaigns that they've been able to dragoon entire governments and police forces into acting as industry enforcers. But, says p2pnet, far from being at the top of the pile, movie and music piracy rank 16th and 20th, respectively, on a global index of illicit markets. (Software piracy ranks 7th.) And even those positions are subject to considerable doubt." The statistics make fascinating reading with Marijuana claiming the gold for the world's largest illicit trade ahead of Counterfeit Technology Products, Cocaine and Opium/heroin, but it was the list of countries that are the worst offenders that knocked our socks off – looking uncannily like the gold medal count at an Olympic games, the USA wins hands down from China, Germany, UK and Russia. The top 20 markets and countries can be found here.