On the occasion of the release of the film on the Mixed by Erry phenomenon, FIMI - Italian Music Industry Federation recalls how piracy at the time of the events constituted a huge illicit business that hit the heart of legal production and record investment in talent.
As recalled in the Mixed by Erry case, the Frattasio brothers, who ran the illegal enterprise, were arrested in May 1997 after a long investigation conducted by the District Anti-Mafia Directorate of Naples, coordinated by PM Luciano D'Angelo and by the agents of the Commissariat ' 'Dante'' of Naples assisted by the FPM - Federation against Musical Piracy.
However, as will emerge following the major investigations conducted by the DDA, launched precisely starting from the FIMI complaints during those years and then confirmed by the stories of the Camorra informers in the 2000s, musical and audiovisual counterfeiting - underestimated and often seen as a harmless phenomenon of custom - it was actually the second most profitable business of the clans after drug trafficking, with limited investments and a very low degree of risk. The organizations that produced and distributed the fake cassettes and CDs initially paid substantial revenues to the Camorra families who controlled the different areas of Naples, but the latter soon infiltrated all the links in the production chain with the purchase, management and control of the entire distribution.
This scenario is not dissimilar to what happens today with IPTV piracy, which affects football broadcasts and the film industry causing millions of euros in damages to rights holders and which feeds the illegal incomes of Campania's big crime.
Underestimating this reality as happened with music piracy, lightly describing it as a phenomenon to be observed with good-natured sympathy certainly does not help to raise public awareness of the serious damage to the legal economy.