James Delahunty
14 Oct 2005 13:44
Three men have been indicted following what is being called the biggest ever bust of pirated CDs in US history. The three men, Ye Teng Wen (29), Hao He (30) and Yaobin Zhai (33) were arrested last week on charges of illegally replicating 325,000 music and software CDs. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney of North California said two of the men were American citizens and one had a U.S. work permit.
"The allegations of massive piracy of music and software reflect the potential loss of millions of dollars to the artists and businesses who legitimately own the copyrights on these works," U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan said in a statement. "These individuals are charged with affixing counterfeit labels on CDs to create the appearance of legitimacy, including the FBI Anti-Piracy Warning that stated 'Unauthorized copying is punishable under federal law.'"
Many Symantac security software packages were found amongst the pile as well as copies of Adobe Photoshop CS. There was also a large amount of Latin music found. The counterfeit discs circulated widely with one of them found at a store in Chicago. The three have been released on bail and are due in court on October 27th. It is estimated that piracy costs the entertainment and software industries tens of billions of dollars.
Source:
Reuters
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