The Recording Industry of America has released its latest “notorious markets” report, its view of where music piracy continues.

“Stream ripping” is a big bugaboo, which involves software and websites that allow people to strip audio from things like YouTube videos. While YouTube-MP.com has been shot down, the RIAA says that there are more than 70 ripper sites (YouTube2MP3.com, Convertmp3, Savefrom, MP3juices, et al) which are visited hundreds of millions of times each year.

Then there’s the issue of torrent indexing sites, aggregators of where to illegally download copyrighted material. The Pirate Bay is still on top of the most-wanted list, followed by sites like Rarbg, 1337x, and Torrentdownloads. The report also looks at illegal cyberlockers, along with specific issues centred in Nigeria and some new third-party app stores.

Finally, there are the physical markets where piracy is rampant. China and Russia are at the top of the list when it comes to counterfeit CDs. Those being produced in China are of such high quality that they’re tough to detect while Russian product is not quite Western commercial quality. It’s a bit odd that no other nations are mentioned in the report. What happened to all the piracy and counterfeiting that was rife in places like South America?

Read the entire report here.

I hope it stays that way for our sake's.