Bootlegs, Counterfeits and Piracy

All Monkee records throughout the world were released on the RCA label,
except the USA, which was on Colgems.

Bootlegs are performances that have never been officially released,
such as a live recording or studio takes.

Counterfeits try to mimic the look and sound of official releases,
but are usually of inferior quality.

Piracy is really just theft.

Piracy, however, was the common means of releasing Western music from the late '60s to the mid '80s
in countries such as Taiwan, South Korea, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Iran.
At that time there was no agreement in place to recognize each others' intellectual property rights.
So the only recourse they had was to release these tunes by piracy.

It had become common practice to have people stationed in California to buy the latest releases
and transport them back to one of these countries and then using the best sound reproduction technology
available to copy and press them on their own private labels. They tried to establish customer loyalty
by featuring attractive women on the picture sleeves or the most popular listing of songs.
But the idea was to get them on the market as fast as possible.

As far as the Monkees are concerned, I've found these pressing labels from
Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Iran.

 

 

From Elisabeth Uphoff's book:

Intellectual Property And US Relations
With Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, And Thailand.