Hong Kong: The Motion Picture Association’s (MPA) Asia-Pacific wide anti-piracy enforcement operation, Operation Blackout, that ran from November 2007 - January 2008, has resulted in the arrest of 675 suspected pirates, seizures of more than 2.6 million pirated discs and 1,200 disc burners.

894 raids were conducted by enforcement authorities in 12 countries including Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand, targeting producers, distributors and sellers of pirated movies. The campaign also targeted the illegal camcording of movies in cinemas with information packages distributed to regional theatre employees to increase their awareness of anti-piracy laws.

The three-month long operation saw 426 burners and 661,411 pirated optical discs seized in Australia; 211 raids conducted in China which yielded 676,384 pirated discs; 117 arrests in India; 189 burners seized in Hong Kong; 423 burners seized in Malaysia along with 110 arrests; 541,800 pirated discs seized in the Philippines; 114 raids conducted in Taiwan which yielded 173 burners; as well as 241 raids in Thailand which saw 243 arrests made.

A total of 1,289 DVD-R burners were seized in Operation Blackout as compared to 450 in the previous operation carried out from May – June 2007. In the past four years, MPA’s bi-annual regional anti piracy operations have resulted in over 5,000 arrests and 32 million pirated discs seized.

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