Taiwanese Police Raid Two Movie Piracy Rings

Two Taiwanese movie piracy rings used a hotline operated by the Motion Picture Association (MPA) to try to put each other out of business, the MPA said Wednesday.The calls resulted in Taiwanese police raiding two separate sites in the city of Taichung on Monday and seizing 80 DVD-R (recordable DVD) burners and 37 CD-R (recordable CD) burners, capable of producing 1.7 million DVD-Rs and 2.7 million CD-Rs in one year, the MPA said.Investigators from the Foundation for the Protection of Film and Video Works (FVWP), which represents the MPA in Taiwan, were with police during both raids, and were surprised to see that one of the suspects from the first raid was a man who had provided them with information about the other ring just days earlier.At the second police raid, a suspect admitted to using the MPA hotline to provide the tip used in the first raid, the FVWP said.Last year, Taiwanese law enforcement agencies seized 1,552 optical disc burners during raids. The figure is just over a fourth of the 4,482 optical disc burners taken by police across the entire Asia-Pacific region last year, according to MPA data. Studios affiliated with the MPA, including Buena Vista International, Paramount Pictures and Sony Pictures Releasing International, lost $6.1 billion to global movie piracy in 2005, with $1.2 billion of that figure from the Asia-Pacific and $1.3 billion in the United States, according to figures provided by the MPA.

-Dan Nystedt, IDG News Services (Taipei Bureau)