In the latest public relations strike in the war on copyright infringement, the music and film industries are sowing fears that content piracy, like drug trafficking before it, is being taken over by organized crime syndicates.

The problem is that the evidence – so far, at least – is lacking.

The mob-piracy meme began spreading in earnest last month, when the Recording Industry Association of America announced in a press release that piracy and organized crime were so intertwined that the entire counterfeit CD production business in the eastern half of the United States "is now dominated by organized criminal syndicates intent on monopolizing the illicit market."

Organized crime's entree into the content business was inevitable given the economics, says Warner Music spokesman Craig Hoffman.

"The markup for a kilo of heroin is 200 percent," Hoffman says. "The markup for pirated CDs and DVDs is 800 percent."

"The business model is similar to dealing drugs," says Chuck Hausman, deputy director of anti-piracy for the Motion Picture Association of America. "The technology makes it easier – cheap burners, color laser printers and scanners (for high-quality disc art and packaging). It's low cost to entry and they're (CDs, DVDs) easy to hide."

This line of reasoning helped fuel an exponential increase in the federal government's efforts against intellectual-property violations last fall. In October, the Department of Justice established the Intellectual Property Task Force and published an 80-page report (.pdf) detailing the agency's plans to combat piracy domestically and globally. The report noted the potential for large criminal groups to cash in on the illicit content business.

"While the harmful consequences of intellectual-property theft may seem frightening, it is also disturbing to learn who is benefiting from many of these crimes," the report reads. "Intellectual-property theft has been linked to organized crime and, potentially, may fund terrorist organizations attracted by the profitability of these offenses."

In fact, links between large gangs and piracy are well-documented in China and Russia, along with other developing countries. But U.S. cases invariably target more run-of-the-mill outlaws, like download site operators and theater camcorder pirates.

Asked to cite actual U.S. convictions involving organized crime, the RIAA and MPAA instead presented a handful of pending piracy cases against warez networks, commercial replicators, a few members of street gangs and a smattering of individual drug dealers – but no John Gotti or Tony Soprano.

"It's not organized crime families, as in 'the mob,'" admits Bradley Buckles, head of the RIAA's anti-piracy unit and former director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. "But large groups engaged in organized criminal activity are involved."

"Each link in the chain is organized – the manufacturers or burners, the distributors who collect the discs from the burners and the peddlers who get the discs from the distributors," says Bill Shannon, the MPAA's anti-piracy director on the East Coast.

In one case, an Oakland, California-based convicted drug dealer and pimp named Ali Rizwaan – aka "Cuban Tony" – was arrested in April for piracy. Police executed search warrants at three locations operated by Rizwaan, and allegedly uncovered pirated movies and DVD-R burners, according to Hausman.

In another raid in San Antonio in early July, police arrested repeat offender Michael Portillo for piracy and found 47 burners, two unloaded handguns, two loaded automatic weapons, a bulletproof vest, some methamphetamine, heroin, cocaine and marijuana. Two other men on the scene were arrested on drug-related charges.

And last month an individual member of one of Los Angeles' notorious 18th Street gangs was arrested for peddling CDs and DVDs in Santee Alley in Los Angeles, where counterfeit handbags, clothing and other knockoff items are also for sale on the street. The MPAA claims that Los Angeles street gangs, including Crazy Riders, the 18th Street gangs and 42nd Street Little Gangsters, are actively burning, distributing and selling pirated CDs and DVDs.

"We see more weapons on raids," Shannon says. "There's a rise in violence because it's a big cash business. Some gangs are also extorting protection money from peddlers and distributors and others involved in selling pirated content and carrying around lots of cash."

But do a handful of piracy cases with violent suspects add up to organized crime? Skeptics say no.

"A few gang members get arrested and all of the sudden there are reports that gangs are pigeonholed as being big into piracy," says Alejandro Alfonso, who routinely testifies as an expert witness on Los Angeles gangs. "But if anything, it's small-scale stuff.... Gangs might be involved on the fringes."

"In the U.S., piracy tends to be small-time players," says Mike Goodman, a senior analyst at the Yankee Group. "I've not seen any cases of organized crime.... It's four, five, six guys who (burn discs and) sell them on the street."

To doubters, MPAA's Hausman and the Los Angeles district attorney's office say stay tuned: Several large-scale, for-profit piracy operations are currently under investigation. "There are a number of pending piracy cases I can't talk about," says Jeff McGrath, district attorney at the high-tech crimes unit in Los Angeles.

"We're also investigating the distribution of CDs and DVDs into stores, the mixing of illegitimate and legitimate product. The quality of artwork can make it hard to tell them apart," McGrath says.

For now, no convictions have been made, and neither the industry associations nor police are able to provide convincing detail, something they attribute to the early stage of their investigations.

"Building cases against groups who run burner labs can be tricky, because there are often not a lot of pirated discs on hand at one time," Hausman says. "It's a just-in-time business."