Eddy Leviten, head of communications, Federation Against Copyright Theft "Organised criminal gangs control the production, distribution and sale of counterfeit DVDs across the UK. Most of these dodgy DVDs have professionally printed artwork to help sell the discs and FACT has been working closely with police to identify the sources of the artwork. With over 50m pirate DVDs sold in the UK every year, this is big business for criminals and there is a huge impact from this illegal activity on the trade of legitimate retailers as well as on the livelihoods of the people who work in the UK’s creative industries."
Andy Brown, corporate affairs director,
BPIF "Although the BPIF sometimes provides knowledge assistance, we don’t have too much contact with the police regarding counterfeiting. It isn’t difficult to acquire the presses and equipment to print counterfeit goods. The issue of course, is printing it well. Printers themselves aren’t necessarily targets for this type of thing, although we have seen cases where they have been involved, the focus tends to be further up the supply chain on companies that provide printing equipment."
Mark Snee managing director, Technoprint "If you look at all these operations, they all use small-scale equipment or are back-street operations. I can’t see an established business getting caught up in something like that, nobody is going to walk in and say ‘can you reproduce these notes for me?’ Having said that, they can definitely produce good quality stuff - I was very embarrassed once when I went into our local sandwich shop. As I was walking out of the door the woman yelled at me ‘this is a fake’."
Eddy Leviten, head of communications, Federation Against Copyright Theft "Organised criminal gangs control the production, distribution and sale of counterfeit DVDs across the UK. Most of these dodgy DVDs have professionally printed artwork to help sell the discs and FACT has been working closely with police to identify the sources of the artwork. With over 50m pirate DVDs sold in the UK every year, this is big business for criminals and there is a huge impact from this illegal activity on the trade of legitimate retailers as well as on the livelihoods of the people who work in the UK’s creative industries."
Andy Brown, corporate affairs director, BPIF "Although the BPIF sometimes provides knowledge assistance, we don’t have too much contact with the police regarding counterfeiting. It isn’t difficult to acquire the presses and equipment to print counterfeit goods. The issue of course, is printing it well. Printers themselves aren’t necessarily targets for this type of thing, although we have seen cases where they have been involved, the focus tends to be further up the supply chain on companies that provide printing equipment."
Mark Snee managing director, Technoprint "If you look at all these operations, they all use small-scale equipment or are back-street operations. I can’t see an established business getting caught up in something like that, nobody is going to walk in and say ‘can you reproduce these notes for me?’ Having said that, they can definitely produce good quality stuff - I was very embarrassed once when I went into our local sandwich shop. As I was walking out of the door the woman yelled at me ‘this is a fake’."
