Two Birmingham Men Are Arrested By UK's New Intellectual Property Crime Unit

cervesaebraciator writes "The Guardian reports that the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit has arrested two men from Birmingham and have seized 'suspected counterfeit DVD box sets worth around £40,000, including titles such as Game of Thrones, CSI and Vampire Diaries.' The claim is that the men were buying foreign counterfeit copies and selling them online as genuine. London police commissioner Adriad Leppard offers commentary indicative of the thinking behind these efforts, saying, 'Intellectual property crime is already costing our economy hundreds of millions of pounds a year and placing thousands of jobs under threat, and left unchecked and free to feed on new technology could destroy some of our most creative and productive industries.' The article offers £51 billion as an estimate for the cost of illegal downloading to the music, film, and software industry, a figure they say will triple by 2015." Meanwhile, Netflix is paying attention to piracy via torrent sites as well. The difference is that they're using that data to decide what shows they should buy.

Re:i don't get it

[thegarbz]

I think the point is that as the end user all you care about is that you get what you're paying for. Extra runs, or overseas imports (grey market items) are common place and I have no problem purchasing them when they are advertised (and priced) as such.

I did have a problem one day when I bought a Nikon lens from a reputable source and after finding a problem with it Nikon wouldn't honour the warranty claim because it was a grey import. I was pissed despite being the owner of several grey market lenses. I went back to the store and demanded they replace the product and told them I will call Nikon afterwards and check the serial number of the replacement too.

They were apologetic. The lens was very cheap originally though.