The statement from the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) has just come out: after a year of investigation, the Canadian police have shut down the activities of the website Audiomaxxx.com, a notorious pirate that was rife notably with Jamaican productions.
Yesterday, a police raid in Winnipeg led to the arrest of four people, including the site’s owner, and to the seizure of more than 200,000 CDs and DVDs. To produce such a volume, several burning towers, professional printers… A veritable workshop. The CRIA also estimated that nearly 30% of the pirated CDs and DVDs seized in Toronto came from this source.
Even if Jamaican music is only part of this seizure, reggae fans knew the Audiomaxxx site well; for several years it sold pirated CDs and DVDs in plain sight. Worse, beyond clashes and live recordings, the site also made a speciality of making the most recent productions available even before their release, thereby killing many projects in the bud.
For a long time, reggae artists and producers, Jamaican, American or European, had been warning us and telling us of their anger at this situation of impunity. The many complaints received by the CRIA will therefore have allowed the law to put a stop to this scandalous practice. At last.
Source: CRIA