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PRISON FOR COUNTERFEIT VIDEO SELLERS

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Mark Nolan / 2011-12-16 20:44:12

A judge in a court in Alicante has ordered two brothers to serve a year each in prison and pay a fine of 52,500 euro, after they were found to be selling duplicated and non original DVD´s in their stores.

Investigators found hundreds of copied DVD´s for sale, along with downloaded content, which contravened the laws of intellectual property, copyright and distribution.

Guardia Civil officers began the investigation when they raided a video store in Novelda in 2006. They found 234 fake DVD´s which the owners of the shop claimed must have been returned in replace of the original films that they had rented out to their clients. They also found hundreds of computer games, duplicated disks and equipment that could be used for copying the original or downloaded content. The pair also tried to claim that much of the collection was their own and for personal and not for profit use.

The Judge in the case did not believe the testaments of the men and considered that it was not plausible for so many pirated disks to have been returned by so many dubious clients.

Fox, Disney and Warner are all named in the case as they have suffered economical damage from the operation.