Click for larger imageA woman and four men were arrested on Wednesday (April 5) during a raid in east London on a pirate DVD factory said to be the largest yet discovered.
Among the 300-plus titles reckoned to have been seized in the raid were Ice Age 2, a film that only goes on general UK cinema release today (Friday).
According to anti-piracy organisation Fact (Federation Against Copyright Theft), "The premises contained over 500 individual DVD burners capable of producing over 60,000 pirate DVDs per day, with an estimated daily street value in excess of £250,000 (circa £1.7m per week)".
As you can see from the above Fact-supplied photo, the pirate operation looks to have had rows of multi-DVD burners of the sort readily available on the net and at computer fairs and legitimately used by many businesses, including wedding videographers.
Fact says that the raid, conducted by police officers and trading standards officials, followed an investigation into the supply of counterfeit DVDs across London and the south east of England. The Metropolitan Police's new Film Piracy Unit (FPU) was, it says, involved in the raid and will be carrying out a detailed investigation into the finances surrounding the pirate operation.
Commenting on the raid, Fact director general Raymond Leinster said, "This operation in conjunction with Waltham Forest Trading Standards, Waltham Forest Police and the Met’s Film Piracy Unit, is another major intervention against organised crime in the UK. We are determined to work together with the police and other enforcement bodies to ensure that we continue to disrupt the supply chain and affect the distribution of counterfeit films across the UK."
Waltham Forest spokesman Gavin Douglas said that the borough, "has a zero-tolerance attitude to organised counterfeiting and will continue to enforce this policy". The raid, he said, "will have a major impact on the pirate DVD sellers operating in the local area and will help reduce the criminal activity brought into local communities by this and associated crimes".
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