Report Says Online Piracy, Counterfeiting is 'Rampant'

A new report that examined online sites that offer pirated content and counterfeit goods found that online trafficking in both is "rampant."

"While counterfeiting and piracy in the physical world are serious problems, these issues are growing at a significant rate online and pose unique challenges in remediation, due to the inherent nature of the Internet with its global reach, cost efficiencies, and anonymity," according to the report released this month from MarkMonitor, which helps companies monitor their trademarks online. The firm used publicly available Internet traffic data to examine several sites that offered counterfeit luxury goods or prescription drugs for sale or allowed users to download, stream or share pirated movies, television shows, music, software or video games. The firm said 67 percent of the pirated sites were hosted in the United States or Western Europe. MarkMonitor focused on 10 "media brands" and found 43 sites that offered the pirated content. The sites attracted a total of 146 million visits per day on average and an estimated 53 billion visits per year. The top visited site, rapidshare.com, had 32 million daily visits on average, according to the report. The 48 sites offering a dozen different types of counterfeit goods examined by MarkMonitor were much less trafficked, receiving more than 240,000 visits per day on average or more than 87 million visits per year.