Man arrested in Jhb for counterfeit DVDs

http://m.24.com/content/FullArticle...60359d990ad4&cat=South Africa&sh=South Africa

A 36 year-old man was arrested in a Johannesburg suburb for being in possession of R300 000 worth of counterfeit DVDs. This followed a tip-off made to police. DVD and CD duplicating equipment was also subsequently seized on the property.

Oh damn! They found a DVD Writer in the guy's possession? I better get rid of mine before I get arrested for being in possession of DVD and CD duplicating equipment.
Anyways. Although it may be ethically wrong to download movies from p2p sites and RS (not TV series though), I try to justify those downloads by saying to myself I wouldn't have bought the DVD anyways, so the movie makers didn't actually lose any money off me.
But if I were to buy or sell a counterfeit movie (in other words pay for it or get paid for it), that just doesn't gel with me. Then the movie makers, distributers, etc. actually do lose money which could've and should've rightfully gone to them.
I would pay to watch or own a good movie thats worth my doh, but anything else is fair game for p2p.

Nice selective morality there...

enigma243 said:

Nice selective morality there...

Click to expand...

Thanks.

BLIXEMPIE said:

http://m.24.com/content/FullArticle...60359d990ad4&cat=South Africa&sh=South Africa

A 36 year-old man was arrested in a Johannesburg suburb for being in possession of R300 000 worth of counterfeit DVDs.

Click to expand...

I bet that R300 000 comes from the number of DVD-Rs x MSRP of each DVD in the store (including VAT and SK/NM markup).

Whereas most of these DVDs sell for less in real life or in 2 for 1 bundles and
if not, they hardly sell at all. Its not as if this guy's turnover would be R300 000.
This is the same in drug busts - cocaine worth R5 million was found - assuming that coke was sold at some inflated price.

I'm pretty sure this is a case of commercial piracy.

PeterCH said:

I bet that R300 000 comes from the number of DVD-Rs x MSRP of each DVD in the store (including VAT and SK/NM markup).

Whereas most of these DVDs sell for less in real life or in 2 for 1 bundles and
if not, they hardly sell at all. Its not as if this guy's turnover would be R300 000.
This is the same in drug busts - cocaine worth R5 million was found - assuming that coke was sold at some inflated price.

Click to expand...

I am pretty sure the cops know the street value of cocaine, thus when they say 5 million rand worth of cocaine that is exactly they mean