International cooperation between the Australian Federal Police (AFP), the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) and Twentieth Century Fox led to the removal of a pirated copy of “The Simpsons Movie” from the Internet within 72 hours.
Australian authorities were able to trace the pirated copy to the home of a 21 year old male who allegedly recorded and uploaded the film. AFACT says that the illegal copy of “The Simpsons Movie” is the first to have been identified by Fox on the Internet anywhere in the world.
AFACT alleges that the film appeared on the Internet just hours after its global release. The movie was uploaded to a U.S. based global streaming site before the film was shown in the U.S. and it was viewed or downloaded over 3,000 times.
Industry investigators were able to remove the copy from the Web site within two hours of it being uploaded. By then the film had already migrated to other Web sites.
“More than 90% of newly released movies that illegally appear on the internet and on the streets around the world originate from camcorder copies. This case shows how fast stolen movies spread across the internet, creating a wild fire of illegal copies originating from just one unauthorised recording,” said Adrianne Pecotic, Executive Director of AFACT.
“Within 72 hours of making and uploading this unauthorized recording, AFACT had tracked it to other streaming sites and P2P systems where it had been illegally downloaded in excess of 110,000 times and in all probability, copied and sold as a pirate DVD all over the world. The speed and spread of illegal copies across the global internet as a result of this camcord copy being made from a mobile phone in a Sydney cinema is staggering.”
