p2pnet.net News:- Big Music says Law Kim Chong, Brazil’s “most notorious pirate,” has been arrested after trying to bribe Luiz Antonio de Medeiros, the chairman of Brazil’s Congressional Anti-piracy Committee (CPI), with between $1million and $2.3 million.

His arrest follows two months of investigation by the Brazilian authorities, says the IFPI, one of the Big Five record labels’ primary enforcement units, headed by ex-RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) boss Jay Berman.

A recent operation by CPI, “dealt a severe blow to Law’s business when tonnes of counterfeited and smuggled goods were seized during raids in his shopping centres,” says the IFPI’s anti-piracy unit in Brazil, APDIF, going on:

“Law had orchestrated several meetings with a policeman working for CPI. These meetings were recorded on tape and camera … and monitored by the Intelligence Bureau of the Federal Police in Brazilia as well as the General Attorney’s Office in Sao Paulo. The surveillance resulted in Law’s arrest on June 1, 2004.”

During the first meetings with the CPI policeman, Law’s lawyer, Pedro Lindolfo Sarlo, offered to pay the CPI Chairman between US$1million and US$2.3 million in return for a favourable CPI report on Law’s business, says the IFPI.

“At the fourth meeting Law himself clinched the negotiations directly with Mr. Medeiros, reiterating the offer in return for the CPI’s report to ‘protect and exempt me’. The courts then allowed the Federal Police to monitor the payment of the first instalment of the bribe ($75,000), after which Law and his lawyer were arrested.”

The bribery money came from smuggling, piracy and unpaid taxes, Medeiros says.

Law, Chinese by birth but a nationalised Brazilian with 20 years in the country, owns several popular shopping centres, most of them consisting of small outlets rented to immigrants and famous for smuggling products, says the IFPI, continuing:

“He is also the supplier of products shipped from China to more than 10,000 point of sale. In addition to these activities, which earn him millions of dollars, Law is suspected of owning several manufacturing plants in China producing pirate product, including pirated music CDs. He has also been suspected on previous occasions of attempting to bribe the police.”

Smarten up
The RIAA very cleverly (it thinks) uses the mainstream media to blend p2p file sharing with hard-core crime such as this, and to spuriously link file-sharers - without exception, ordinary people - with hard-core criminals

In the meanwhile, Organized Crime gangs, particularly those in Russia and China, are making billions of dollars by counterfeiting movie, music and software CDs and DVDs for street and underground markets around the world.

If the RIAA, IFPI and the dozens of other entertainment industry ‘trade’ organizations made a serious effort to use p2p technologies as online distribution and sales systems, instead of trying to stomp them and those who use them, they’d simultaneously and significantly reduce their ‘pirate problem’ and regain much of their disenfranchised customer base.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 11th, 2004 at 6:56 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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