MPAA Taiwan bust
p2p news / p2pnet: Expect soon to see mainstream media reports saying MPAA clone the MPA has busted a movie pirate in Taiwan who was burning more than 1,500,000 CDs a year, pulling in over $8,330,000 annually.
Hollywood’s Foundation for the Protection of Film and Video Works (FVWP) representing the Motion Picture Association (MPA), the overseas version of the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), “joined Taiwan’s IPR Police Task Force in a raid on a pirate optical disc manufacturing and distribution facility in Hsinchu City, seizing a total of 101 DVDR and CD-R burners and arresting a 32-year-old man on suspicion of infringing Taiwan’s Copyright Law,” says the MPAA.
Last summer the MPAA’s Keystone Kops raided what they said was an illicit disc-burning operation nearer to home – in Los Angeles, in fact. Helped this time by the Southern California High Tech Task Force, the MPAA ‘raided’ New Century Media, a legal LA duplicating business. Afterwards, it claimed it had seized “$30 million in illegal stampers and DVDs”.
However, the $30 million figure was pure Hollywood fiction, no ‘pirate’ product was seized and, “False allegations” have “slandered our name and reputation and damaged the business that my husband and I spent 14 years to build,” said company owner Jennifer Yu.
The MPAA dreamed up the figures by estimating the value of the DVDs seized, and the value of DVDs that might have been produced using the equipment”.
In the Taiwan exercise, “The seized burners were capable of producing as many as 1,706,400 pirated DVD-Rs and 1,584,000 CD-Rs in one year, yielding revenues of $8,332,017, assuming the burners were in operation ten-hours-a-day, seven-days-per-week,” said the MPAA.
Where would the MPAA be without “estimated” or “suspected” or “capable of” or “as many as” or “assuming”?
Also See:
illicit disc-burning operation – MPAA kops in another ‘raid’, June 25 12, 2005
Hollywood fiction – IFPI ‘ravaged by pirates’ report, June 24, 2005
January 13th, 2006 at 9:34 pm
…if the MPAA/RIAA were really so successful at stopping piracy, and indeed, if piracy were really such a problem, why would they constantly need to lie like this?
January 13th, 2006 at 10:16 pm
It’s helps the politicians they own to justify the existence of **AA’s of the world. Also to help these paid employees (tghe politicians) in passing of laws.
January 14th, 2006 at 5:00 am
The whole reason these mouthpiece organisations exist is basically a tax dodge. They create all kinds of interesting stats that “prove” their industry is suffering due to something that ideally can’t ever be stopped. Then they claim their members are suffering financial hardship due to the existence and expense of “countering” the thing that ideally can’t ever be stopped. The members then ask for tax breaks etc pointing to the “independent” research from their mouthpiece.
I’m just amazed that so many of the govts of the world have fallen for this scam for so long. Unless of course the ppl in those govts who should be asking questions are being “lobbied” to look the other way?
They don’t ever want to stop piracy. It would ruin the whole scam, and they’d be out of a job.