Press release from AFACT
Today, at Blacktown Local Court in Sydney’s South West, 26-year-old Craig Farrugia pled guilty and was subsequently convicted on movie piracy copyright crimes, fined $5,400 and placed on an 18-month good behaviour bond. All computer equipment seized was to be forfeited to the crown.
The charges arose from a 13 February raid by New South Wales Police, supported by investigators from the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT), in which sophisticated video camcording and computer equipment was seized. Enquiries confirmed that the equipment had been used for making illegal video recordings of a number of the most recently released movies including “He’s Just Not That Into You”, “Marley and Me”, “Yes Man”, “Bedtime Stories”, and “Beverley Hills Chihuahua”.
A painstaking investigation by AFACT investigators tracked down Farrugia using, amongst other investigative tools and techniques, state-of-the-art digital watermarking technology. The movie industry applies invisible digital watermarks to the prints of movies shown in cinemas. Like fingerprints, every watermark is unique and allows investigators to identify any cinema where movies are illegally recorded.
Commenting on the conviction, Magistrate Keady said that the actions of Farrugia were “..part of an organised criminal conspiracy”.
Magistrate Keady went on to say, “[The movie industry is] ..entitled to the same protection of their property as are householders whose house is broken into and property removed… ..It is a property offence similar to that of larceny.”
The Director of Operations at AFACT, Neil Gane said: “The successful conclusion of this case is an important development in the fight to prevent illegal camcording of movies during their cinematic release.
“The court’s guilty verdict and sentence send a clear message that anyone thinking of illegally camcording a movie should be aware that it is a crime and that the technology exists to identify them, track them down and take them to court on criminal copyright charges. I would like to take this opportunity to commend the professionalism of the Blacktown Proactive Team of the NSW Police.”
Deterring camcording and prosecuting those found to be illegally recording a movie is one of AFACT’s top strategic priorities. Over 90% of first-release pirated movies to first hit the internet or be illegally sold as pirated DVDs originate from illegal recordings being made in cinemas. The effect of illegal camcords is particularly damaging to the economics of the movie industry as they often appear during the theatrical release window, stealing revenue from Australian cinemas and retail outlets and putting many jobs at risk.
Once recorded, ‘Release Groups’ distribute the illegal movies online to ‘Top Sites’, where the stolen movies are made available on P2P networks and shared by downloaders, greatly accelerating the spread of pirated movies. ‘Release Groups’ are also known to sell the illegally recorded movies to criminal groups who manufacture thousands of copies for sale via Internet auction sites, at shopping malls, markets, pubs, clubs and from the back of cars and vans.
The court found that the movies illegally camcorded by Farrugia were distributed by international release group “PreVail.” They had been made available on numerous web sites as well as forensically matched to pirated DVDs purchased in Australia and a number of other countries around the world including the USA, Mexico, Britain, Spain, the Philippines and Malaysia.
In 2008, 916 illegally camcorded movies were forensically matched to their cinema of origin, with 122 of these originating from cinemas in the Asia-Pacific region. Forensic monitoring over the past four months has shown that Australia has become a major hub for regional camcording, recording the second most forensic matches after the Philippines.
This is the second Australian conviction for making illegal camcords of movies in cinemas. In November 2007, Jose Duarte was convicted of making and distributing an illegal camcord copy of the theatrical release of “The Simpsons Movie” on his mobile phone and uploading it to the Internet. The unauthorized recording was tracked to streaming sites and P2P systems within 72 hours of Duarte making and uploading it, where it was illegally downloaded more than 110,000 times and, in all probability, copied and sold as a pirated DVD around the world.
Penalties for copyright crimes are a maximum of $60,500 and/or 5 years’ jail per offence.