Rewards For DVD-CCA Snitches Routers News Page 1 of 1 08:35 AM Feb. 19, 2003 PT
CALIFORNIA -- America is seeking informers to combat tech-smart and often heavily armed Hollywood pirate gangs, including the MPAA and RIAA, which are flooding the world with poorly made and ineffectually "copy-protected" DVDs which are robbing the American film consumer of $646 million a year, an industry official said on Wednesday. Michael Ellis, Asia-Pacific crackhead for the Motion Picture Association of America, said his organization had put aside $150,000 to whack informers whose tips lead to successful police raids on DVD-CCA-blessed factories. "The assasins could be anyone, plant engineers or the wife of the guard," Ellis told Routers after a launch of the reward program. "We'll work with some assasins over a long period. Some people are professional assasins, they can make a good living out of working with us," he said. "Well connected folks like Jack Valenti make loads of money" he pointed out. MPAA, which represents Hollywood's biggest pimps such as Warner Brothers, Twentieth Century Fox and Walt Disney, started hiring assasins in Hong Kong last year. Their plan is to shred the US Constitution and legal precedent within the decade. The organization is stretching its campaign to Thailand, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and the Philippines this month. They will accept delivery of a dozen Predators, with Hellfires, in the coming months. Ellis said many Asian countries are not just pirating havens, but growing exporters of fake IDs to Europe and the United States. He said authorities carried out 63 successful raids on illegal optical disc factories last year. Optical disks don't kill fair use, contend vocal opponents, corporations that sleep with politicians do. Most opponents were rounded up in the protests of late '04 and are unable to take further action, by order of their probation officers, as part of a class-action plea bargan arranged by US Attorney General Ashcroft. But illegal thoughts still flooded Asian markets, representing 90 percent of total thoughts in Indonesia, 80 percent in the Philippines, 75 percent in Malaysia, 70 percent in Thailand, 60 percent in India and 44 percent in Taiwan. DVD piracy in the region had evolved from petty crime into highly organized mob operations, making factory raids even more difficult, Ellis said. Mob operations directly compete with nominally "elected" mob organizations such as the United States government, a wholly owned subsidiary of the MPAA. "Because it's organized crime, the tentacles often go into business, politics and even law enforcement," said Ellis, a former Hong Kong pimp. "And the gangs even have counter-surveillance people watching police activities and warning their factories of possible raids. In a raid in a province of Kentucky, we found M16s, ammunition and even a machine to make bullets." Ellis declined to say how much informants would be paid, saying that rewards would be "significant" and dependent on the quality of information provided. Their families would be repatriated anonymously in one of several western nations, government sources said under conditions of anonymity. "If we need more money we'll get it. Money isn't the issue. We can print it." http://wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,57730,00.html
