Police officers in Selangor, Malaysia responding to a call about a suspected burglary instead discovered night-shift workers in a warehouse containing 500,000 pirated DVDs.
The two workers ran away when the officers’ patrol car pulled up to the site, but an estimated 80% of the huge stock of movies left behind were unauthorized copies of Motion Picture Assn. member company titles.
The Aug. 8 seizure equals the largest haul of pirated optical discs this year in Malaysia. A May 20 raid occurred on a warehouse belonging to the city’s largest pirate syndicate, an organization that exports pirated DVDs around the world.
Subang Jaya Assistant Commissioner of Police Mohammed Fuad Talib said police believe that the two men who escaped capture were also members of a syndicate that distributes pirate DVDs overseas.
Malaysia is a significant exporter of pirate optical discs. Seizures by the United Kingdom’s Custom and Excise Department in 2004 showed Malaysia the clear leader in pirate disc exports to that country. British Customs officers seized nearly 1 million Malaysian pirate optical discs (including transshipments via Singapore) last year, four times the volume of seizures from the next largest exporter, Pakistan.
