p2pnet - rss feed: US counterfeiters jailed in China
p2pnet.net News:- Two Americans arrested in July last year as the “leading suspects in a pirated DVD trafficking ring” in China have now been sentenced.
The men were caught in the, “first-ever co-operative joint investigation between the two countries’ police forces on DVD piracy," Gao Feng, the deputy director of China’s economic crime investigation department (ECID) was quoted as saying in China Daily.
The Ministry of Public Security said it was also the first DVD piracy case "cracked via the Internet".
"The United States and other countries have been pressing China to crack down on rampant copyright violations there. The sentences marked the culmination of a three-year investigation by Chinese police, the U.S. Customs Service, and the Motion Picture Association of America," says the Associated Press.
The Americans were, "arrested with the help of the Bureau of Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) of the US Department of Homeland Security," said China Daily at the time.
The No. 2 District Court in Shanghai sentenced Randolph Hobson Guthrie, 38, to two-and-a-half years in prison and fined him $60,500. Abram Cody Thrush, convicted as an accessory, was sentenced to one year in prison and fined $1,200 and, "Both Americans were ordered deported after serving their sentences," says AP.
The MPAA and RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) routinely lump mom-and-pop online file sharing, where no money changes hands and which has no demonstrable effect on sales, with this kind of hard-core crime under which professionals counterfeit physical product for sale on world blackmarkets, reaping huge profits.
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See:-
China Daily - China jails 2 U.S. men for piracy, July 31, 2004
Associated Press - US nationals arrested for DVD piracy, April 20, 2005
April 20th, 2005 at 11:19 pm
which is the crouching tiger, and which is the hidden dragon?
i’m wondering…is it the year of the weasel?