Edinburgh Police Raid Pirates Den

A counterfeit DVD operation being run from an Edinburgh city centre flat has been smashed in a raid by police and trading standards officers. The flat in Marchmont was believed to be the centre of an illegal operation producing pirate films and computer games.

Movies and games with a value of more than £10,000 were seized from the property, along with computer hardware.

It is understood the hardware was used to create copies of the titles which were offered for sale.

One person has been interviewed over a string of offences, which may have been committed under the Trade Marks Act 1994.

Officials said investigations were continuing and a report may be submitted to the procurator fiscal.

The raid followed a tip-off to authorities that counterfeit goods were being sold from the address.

Trading standards officers said around 2000 discs, believed to be computer games, were among the haul. They worked closely with police to mount the operation last month and close down the counterfeiters.

Councillor Sheila Gilmore, who covers trading standards activity in the city, said: "This type of seizure at the point of manufacture is unusual. Most of the seizures tend to take place at the point of sale.

"But where the information is available it is preferable to stop them before the goods reach the streets.

"We recently ran an initiative destroying counterfeit DVDs and we would discourage anyone from buying them.

"People may think there is no harm, but they are often poor quality and there are linkages between the traders and organised crime."

Earlier this month, owners of pirated DVDs in Edinburgh were encouraged to take them to be destroyed by a mobile shredding lorry as part of a national amnesty.

Counterfeiting has been linked to terror organisations, which are said to use the trade in fake goods as a means of raising funds and laundering cash.

Trading Standards officials say DVD piracy is not a victimless crime, as sales support illegal activities such as drug dealing, people smuggling and benefit fraud. But new figures show that sales of pirate DVDs are up two per cent on 2005, with almost 78 million fakes sold last year.

A council spokeswoman said: "The flat in Marchmont was raided by trading standards and Lothian and Borders Police.

"This was following receipt of information that counterfeit goods were being traded from that address."

"Approximately 2000 discs (suspected to be counterfeit computer games) were seized during the raid and also some computer hardware."

A police spokesman said: "We carried out a joint operation in conjunction with Trading Standards officers which led to the recovery of counterfeit DVDs and computer games."

According to new research, more people in Scotland have knowingly bought a pirate DVD than anywhere else in the UK.

In March, a massive haul of counterfeit DVDs - including thousands of hardcore porn films - was seized in a string of raids on homes across the Capital.

Trading standards and customs and excise officers joined forces to target a gang of Chinese street peddlers at 12 addresses across Edinburgh.

The gang are thought to have been planning to sell the illegal goods door-to-door in shops and offices across Edinburgh.

The fake DVDs included the Oscar-winning Walk The Line, Munich, Chicken Little, Broken Flowers, Two For The Money and Memoirs of a Geisha. The DVD haul is thought to have a street value of more than £500,000.

The FACTS
The Federation Against Copyright Theft estimates film piracy costs the UK industry more than £450 million a year and the Motion Picture Association of America claims bootleg DVDs and videos cost the industry £1.7 billion a year worldwide.

The number of pirate DVDs flooding Edinburgh was last year blamed for a decline in Capital cinema audience figures.

Last August, industry watchdog the Anti-Counterfeiting Group (ACG) praised Edinburgh City Council for its work in smashing the supply of counterfeit DVDs, CDs and computer games at Ingliston Sunday market.

The success came a year after the council was dubbed by FACT the "worst authority in Britain" for cracking down on the counterfeit trade.

Three major Hollywood studios threatened to pull out of the 2004 International Film Festival in protest at the council's failure to eliminate the lucrative trade in pirated DVDs.

The Sunday market at Ingliston was regularly targeted by the police and trading standards officers for fake DVDs and computer games. In one operation, more than £5m worth of counterfeit DVDs was seized as traders fled the scene. The market was axed last year by operators Spook Erections.

Story source: scotsman.com.