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The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) welcomed the newest version of the United States Trade Representative’s (USTR) Notorious Markets Report on Tuesday (Jan. 30), which gives an annual run-down of varied types of copyright infringement, together with digital music piracy.

Digital music piracy just isn’t front-of-mind for a lot of listeners within the age of streaming; even the business itself has targeted extra of its current frustration on streaming fraud and the recognition of rain sounds, no less than in public feedback made within the final 12 months.

However, international music piracy inched up in 2022, in keeping with a March 2023 report from MUSO, a U.Ok. know-how firm, which tracked over 15 billion visits to music piracy websites that 12 months.

The USTR’s new report highlighted a handful of web sites — together with 1337X, Krakenfiles, Rapidgator and Ssyoutube — the place individuals go to stream or obtain songs illegally. “Ssyoutube is reportedly the most popular YouTube ripping site globally, with over 343 million visitors just in April 2023,” the USTR famous in a single instance.

“We appreciate the report’s prioritization of thefts that target the music community such as stream-ripping,” stated George York, the RIAA’s senior vp of worldwide coverage, in an announcement. 

Overall, music is much less of a priority on this 12 months’s USTR report relative to 2023’s. The doc’s major focus is the “potential health and safety risks posed by counterfeit trademark goods.” 

The USTR was heartened by the truth that “this year many e-commerce and social commerce platforms took solid steps toward initiating additional anti-counterfeiting practices and adapting to new circumvention techniques used by counterfeiters.” 

“Several platforms filed public submissions outlining their implementation of new anti-counterfeiting tools, including releasing educational campaigns, increasing identity verification requirements, and implementing faster and more transparent notice-and-takedown processes,” the report continued. “Additionally, several platforms have invested in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies as a way to scale up and quickly adapt traditional anti-counterfeiting measures such as text and image screening.”

The RIAA had requested the USTR to focus on one other facet of AI, in keeping with comments submitted in October, although it was not in the end included within the report.

At the time, the RIAA famous that “the year 2023 saw an eruption of unauthorized AI vocal clone services that infringe not only the rights of the artists whose voices are being cloned but also the rights of those that own the sound recordings in each underlying musical track. This has led to an explosion of unauthorized derivative works of our members’ sound recordings which harm sound recording artists and copyright owners.”

In an announcement following the USTR’s newest launch, York “urge[d] the organization to take “a close look in the future at emerging piracy challenges presented by AI, including the widespread illegal use of copyrighted sound recordings and artist names, images, and likenesses to generate invasive and unlawful voice clones and deepfakes.”