Entertainment: If You Can’t Beat ‘Em . . .

Frank Zappa knew something was seriously amiss when he came across a booklet called A Guide to the Alternative Recordings of Frank Zappa. The pamphlet listed 400 titles — or about 350 more than the veteran rocker has ever released. “In 25 years I have made about 50 real albums, and somehow guys with little cassette machines have managed to produce eight times as many albums and offer them for sale,” laments Zappa.

Until not long ago, the production of unauthorized records was a marginal activity that musicians tolerated and even encouraged as a form of tribute by their fans. But the bootlegging of albums has now become a full-blown, underground industry with millions of dollars in profits and royalties at stake. Tape cassettes remain the bootleggers’ format of choice, since the duplicating equipment is relatively cheap, but digital compact discs are gaining ground. “CD is the pirate medium of the future,” says Mark Kingston, spokesman for the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.

The bootleg CD boom began in 1988 with the appearance of the Ultra Rare Trax series, a high-fidelity compendium of alternate versions and outtakes of songs by the Beatles. Since then, the market has been flooded with CDs featuring live concerts and unreleased tracks by such performers as Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, R.E.M. and Bruce Springsteen. One of the most sought-after bootlegs is Prince’s so-called Black Album, which his label, Warner Bros., has never released at the singer’s request. Since May, bootleg copies of outtakes from U2’s unfinished new album have been circulating in Europe.

Bootleggers steal music by taping radio and TV broadcasts, sneaking portable recorders into live concerts, surreptitiously tapping into studio mixing boards or even bribing studio executives. Once the pirates have their booty, they pay legitimate CD manufacturers to produce discs from the master tapes, which are often labeled with a bogus name to escape detection. Most bootleg CDs are made in Germany, Italy and Eastern Europe, where lax regulation and sketchy copyright laws make enforcement difficult. The illicit CDs are then smuggled into the U.S., where they are sold for prices ranging from $25 to $100.

Fed up with having their profits pilfered, musicians are striking back with the weapon they know best — their own music. Next week Zappa will kick off his “Beat the Boots!” campaign with the release of a 10-album Bootleg Box of his own music that had been bootlegged. Says Zappa: “I think it’s up to artists to do whatever they can to stand up for their rights.”

Earlier this year, Dylan fans were treated to The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3, a collection of rare and unreleased tracks; the package climbed to No. 49 on the Billboard pop chart. Last month, Paul McCartney authorized a limited 500,000-copy release of Paul McCartney Unplugged, the Bootleg, which documents an all-acoustic concert.

The record industry hopes that it will be able to control the production of bootleg CDs because of the relatively small number (about 115) of disc- manufacturing plants around the world, vs. millions of cassette-dubbing machines. But that advantage may prove fleeting because an array of new formats is poised to enter the market: digital audiotapes, digital compact cassettes and even recordable mini discs. While those formats are likely to contain devices to thwart mass copying, musicians may find that the only way to beat the bootleggers is to drown them out with legitimate material.