Moscow Police set into motion large-scale operation against media pirates, having shut down a third of 3,600 outlets selling the counterfeit discs and stripping the black market of at least 2 million rubles.
Photo: Dmitry Lebedev
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Moscow Police Closed 1,200 Pirate Outlets
Moscow police set into motion large-scale operation against media pirates, having shut down a third of 3,600 outlets selling the counterfeit discs. The black market losses are estimated to reach at least 2 million rubles by this weekend. At the same time, the general decline in anti-pirate efficiency is evident. The police used to close up to 75 percent of the pirate outlets during previous raids.
”We were warned that the operation would last at least till the end of this week,” an owner of one of the outlets said. Similar to the previous raids, quite a few sellers of pirate disks halted the trade for a while.
“Of 3,600 outlets selling media carriers, roughly a third was closed,” said Russky Shchit (Russian Shield) Association President Yury Zlobin. “Another third removed counterfeit disks from the counters.” Given that the weekly turnover of illegal media retail is roughly 6 million rubles, the losses could be from 2 million rubles to 3 million rubles.
The inspections are being carried out under the Counterfeit Operation that has been underway since the start of this year, said Andrey Pilipchuk, the briefer at Interior Ministry’s Economic Security Department.
The current raid is by far not the first counter-pirate effort of Moscow police. The pioneering operation was conducted late 2005, shocking the pirates by efficiency. In Moscow, 75 percent of the disk outlets were shut down during a week to two weeks and the lost profits reached $1 million.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Sep. 28, 2007
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