Soft sentences ‘have given counterfeiters control of 60% of DVD sales’
Industry and garda experts say the growth in piracy is partly the result of lenient sentences being handed down to criminals in the courts. Preliminary figures from the film industry suggest that 59% of the trade is now made up of counterfeit products, compared with 44% last year.
“It might sound extraordinary, but two years ago we had 42 seizures for the whole year, involving 14,000 counterfeit disks. By the end of December this year, we’ll have 700 plus seizures and we might exceed 100,000 disks,” said Brian Finnegan of the Irish National Federation Against Copyright Theft (INFACT).
