Mumbai: Acting on information provided by Taiwan Foundation Against Copyright Theft (TFACT), the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Police raided a DVD-R burner lab in Taipei County on 29 August. They arrested two operators, a 37-year-old man and a 36-year-old woman and seized 120 DVD-R burners.

Along with the burners, police seized 15 mobile phones and over 30,000 pirated discs, including MPA member companies’ titles The Happening, WALL·E and Wanted.

The DVD-R lab was operated by a pirate syndicate that offered pirated movies for sale through a website and flyers distributed in the Taipei and Taoyuan areas. Had the operation remained in business for one year, it could have produced more than 6.5 million pirated discs, potentially generating millions of dollars of illegal profits a year.

"We applaud the Taiwan IPR Police for uncovering another large-scale pirate burner lab. This is the 13th burner lab taken down this year by the Taiwanese authorities." said Asia-Pacific for the MPA president and managing director Mike Ellis.

To date 1,240 burners have been seized in TFACT/MPA operations in Taiwan, surpassing last year’s total of 1,076.