Movie Piracy Complaints Shut Down Entire Market
After constant complaints from the MPAA-funded Federation Against Copyright Theft over the sale of pirate movies by traders, a council in the UK has taken the decision to shut down an entire city market.
As reported on TorrentFreak, in 2008 a city in the north of England took drastic action to stop people selling pirate DVDs and CDs at a street market.
Market officials threw out the baby along with the bath water by introduced a blanket ban on all CDs and DVDs – not just the counterfeit ones but ALL media and audio-visual products, including computer games.
Now, a council in Leeds, England, has dealt with its piracy problem by throwing out the baby, the bath water, the bath and the bath room, by shutting down an entire market following complaints and lobbying by FACT, the MPAA-funded Federation Against Copyright Theft.
Leeds City Council said it had closed down the near 20 year old Cross Green market – a venue which attracts up to 1,000 stallholders every week – because of the high levels of illegal and counterfeit goods on sale. Arrests and convictions had apparently not solved the issue.
“FACT has been working with Safer Leeds to find a solution to the problems that have plagued Cross Green Market for years. Over the past year alone we, along with other organisations, have made frequent visits to the market and found a high proportion of stalls selling counterfeit and stolen goods,” said Kieron Sharp, FACT Director General.
“It is vital that the trade in counterfeit goods which has blighted so many markets is stamped out and those markets are returned to being safe environments for families to enjoy. It is regrettable that criminal activity in Cross Green Market had reached such levels that the only solution was to shut it down,” he added.
The hundreds of legitimate traders affected by the closure said they were happy that their businesses had been ruined by the decision, since those selling the pirate DVDs have now all given up their trade and piracy has completely stopped in Leeds.
Yeah, right….
Thanks to Andrew
‘safe environments for families to enjoy.’
local markets selling farmers cheese, home-bakes and and toys are all ran by biker gangs, who eat families.
Kieron Sharp is a great man!
‘i cant take my family to the market, someone might be selling dvds…’
but thanks to the hero Mr. Sharp, now me and my kids can walk down the vacant area, where it USED to be.
So glad. Clearly the .gov speak for me!!
“Market officials threw out the baby along with the bath water by introduced a blanket ban on all CDs and DVDs”
lolololololol Poor Baby! :(
“not just the counterfeit ones but ALL media and audio-visual products, including computer games.”
Its all BANNED even if its legal. What a way to Attract Tourists.
No Sunday Shopping for You.
thats like sending the traffic in the opposite direction ta stop hookers
There is two kinds of “piracy” I think are morally not acceptable. They are:
– Selling (accent on Selling) obvious “pirate” stuff, thus making money from other peoples’ work – that just isn’t fair against customers, authors and even the release groups; we, the “free culture society”, really don’t need those lamers.
– Selling (again, accent on Selling) counterfeit media, in other words, making a 1:1 clone of a commercial CD/DVD/BD/ w/e, but not because it looks nicer, but rather to sell it for the same unreasonable price the original disc costs; again, everybody is cheated, and the faker gets the cash he doesn’t deserve.
Nice to see FACT attempt to eliminate these, but the way they try doing it is Idiocracy-worthy. Epic fail for them and for everybody in that town.
@KsbjA
I’m not in favor of this type of piracy either, but as you point out, the method used to tackle it is ridiculous
This is the equivalent of saying “This guy hid pot in his pack of cigarettes!” “Alright, cardboard boxes are illegal!”
LOL @ Leeds council.
You’d probably feel a lot safer in Leeds now that pirate DVDs are not being sold there by people who want to make a few pennies.
Thank God for MPAA’s FACT making the streets of Leeds safer for all.
Forget about booze, drugs, binge drinkers, prostitution, gun crime, gangs crime, etc. This is more deserving of closing the entire market.
/Sarcasm. dually noted ;P
Piracy is that when you copy something and make money with that copy, example copying dvd movie and selling that copy with profit. Not good.
File sharing is not piracy. Person that copys dvd movie to file form and puts it to some torrent site, won’t get any profit from it. It’s more likely to lose money due internet connection cost.
Sharing is ok, making money from it, is not.
On that line I walk…
y dont they sell those movies for lesser price also how much money they want to make out of it they wanna keep earning money forever thats not fair ….i dont think this is going to stop the piracy only it will become xpensive n the venue will change …they must take into account that it cant end n they know that thats y they put up a heavy price n make money out of it ….they r not loosing money they just keep whining about it …TV came n they all cried it was eating their business…even VCR’s were a menace n they still make money n r not finished huh…greedy bunch of people
`The hundreds of legitimate traders affected by the closure said they were happy that their businesses had been ruined by the decision, since those selling the pirate DVDs have now all given up their trade and piracy has completely stopped in Leeds.`
since when do real ppl get happy their whole market has been shut down by the mafia friends? This stinks of a conspiracy or set up or whateva. http://www.sharethefiles.com
If these RIAtards reduced the price of CDs and DVDs then people would definitely buy the real deal rather than pay for a cr@ppy knock off.
Instead of spending billions to stop piracy to make more profit, it would make sense to inject those billions to the customer by reducing the price of CD/DVDs.
Then those counterfeit sellers would be out of business. I guess greedy people do not know common sense.
They just want to bite the hand that feeds them.
Sorry Disagre.
Even if Music CDs dropped to £2.00 and Movie DVD to £5 for new releases. Profiteering Pirate scum would still sell it for 50p – £1 less as many people can say no to a perceived bargain, and getting something for less.
I don’t see how you can say definitely.
sorry : typo
should say “can’t say no “
and what about the real life espisodes from which the film makers are sucking inspiration to their film productions? are this people paying any royalties to us? no, never! let us ban this guys!