Digital pirates busted in Sydney and Melbourne

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Tuesday, 18 December 2007 09:08

Opinion and Analysis

Australian authorities in Sydney and Melbourne have been involved in separate operations to uncover acts of music and movie piracy, showing Australia is no safe-haven for digital pirates.

Australia might well be down under and far away from the rest of the world, but thanks to the Internet, the tyranny of distance no longer applies to anything you can get from the Internet.

Given the ease with which even full length movies can be downloaded from the Internet and endlessly duplicated onto blank DVDs, pirates can easily make good money from downloading the latest blockbuster hits.

Copies are then sold, often locally at weekend markets or in other ways – but pirates be warned – crime might temporarily pay, but the authorities are watching and waiting to pounce.

According to a news report in the SMH, a Sydney based Internet Cafe called ‘Interville Technology’ at World Square in Sydney’s CBD has been raided by the Australian Federal Police.

This is allegedly because staff were downloading movies and music and selling them to customers who transferred the files directly to portable hard drives instead of laboriously burning them to DVDs.

Meanwhile, in the Melbourne suburb of St Albans, News.com.au has reported that a tip-off from a member of the public has led police to shut down an alleged DVD piracy operation with 50,000 discs of various movie titles seized.

This follows a similar bust only a month ago in the same suburb, with both busts closing operations worth millions of dollars per year.

Consumers that wittingly or unwittingly buy pirated movies and music aren't simply taking profits away from studios and artists, but are also supporting criminal networks, some of whom are involved in spam, phishing and other operations that affect consumers worldwide. Pirated content is also usually of inferior quality to the genuine article.

Life is getting harder for pirates who want to profit from digital crime!