DVD piracy bigger than drugs trade

Britain's £500million-a-year DVD piracy industry is now more profitable than the drugs trade, a new report claims today.

It reveals how the practice - with 1,000 per cent profits and relatively minor penalties - funds drugs and people-trafficking, paramilitary gangs and even terrorism.

The report shows DVD piracy is one of Britain's fastest growing crimes, with seizures more than doubling in the past year - when they had already quadrupled since 2002.

It says Triad and Snakehead gangs are forcing illegal immigrants from China to sell pirate DVDs to fund their passage to Britain, while paramilitaries are behind 80 per cent of counterfeiting in Northern Ireland.

The dossier by the Industry Trust for Intellectual Property Awareness, the entertainment industry's investigators, includes Interpol's claim: " Estimates are that counterfeiting is more profitable than drugs trafficking."

Interpol's secretary-general Ronald Noble says: "Intellectual property crime is becoming the preferred method of funding for a number of terrorist groups."