Mumbai: On 17 July, Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) officers with the assistance of Taiwan Foundation Against Copyright Theft (TFACT), representing the Motion Picture Association (MPA) in Taiwan raided a major pirate burner lab in Taipei County, seizing 120 DVD-R and 209 CD-R burners.
In addition to the burners, police seized more than 130,000 pirated discs, including MPA member companies’ titles Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Iron Man, and The Incredible Hulk. A 43 year old man was arrested.
Investigations into the pirate website http://98.to/vcd911 by CIB and TFACT officers, led to them to this burner lab located at Hsintien City, Taipei County. The burner lab used the website and flyers to sell and distribute pirated discs they produced. Had the operation remained in business for one year, the lab could have produced over 14 million pirated discs.
"The size of this burner lab is a clear indication that piracy remains a key concern in Taiwan" said MPA Asia-Pacific president and managing director Mike Ellis. "This action underscores the resolve of the Taiwanese authorities and sends a strong message to the pirates that the war against piracy has no summer vacation."
"With the support of TFACT and MPA, we will not rest until the last pirate is taken down" said CIB section chief officer Wen-Chun Huang.
In Taiwan, it is frequently the case that pirated movies are individually burned onto optical discs with CD-R or DVD-R burners. Burner labs can contain dozens of burners, capable of producing millions of pirate CD-Rs or DVD-Rs per year.
The number of burners seized in this raid is the largest in Taiwan since May 2004, when officers from the Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau found 416 burners in an enforcement operation against a major pirate syndicate based in Changhua City.
To date 1,084 burners have been seized in TFACT/MPA operations in Taiwan, surpassing last year’s total of 1,076.
