AfterDawn: News

Illegal discs seized at Brazilian border

Uruguayan Customs officials worked with Apdif Uruguay (local industry anti-piracy group) in an investigation which led to the seizure of hundreds of thousands of pirated music and movie products. Officials discovered a smuggling ring that imports CDs from Uruguay to sell in the pirate markets of Brazil. The smugglers sourced blank discs from the free port of Montevideo and used the duty free shops as distribution points.

This allowed the pirates to evade import duties on both sides of the border and increase their profits by at least 50%. Apdif Uruguay and Uruguayan Customs officials raided the shops during October. The raids led to the seizure of a shipment of 750,000 blank DVD-Rs which had left Montevideo without proper documentation about its destination and content.



A further raid, carried out in conjunction with the Brazilian authorities, in the city of Santana do Livramento across the border, led to the seizure of 257,000 blank CD-Rs and DVD-Rs. The blank discs were destined for the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre in a touring bus belonging to the musical Brazilian group "Toque Fandangueiro". Documents seized along with the cargo indicated that these discs allegedly originated in Miami.

Written by: James Delahunty @ 6 Nov 2008 19:11

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• 9 comments

• varnull

  It's illegal to own blank disks now? Wonder whose copyright those were infringing.

  6.11.2008 23:41 #1

• engage16

  Originally posted by varnull: It's illegal to own blank disks now? Wonder whose copyright those were infringing. Now I gotta hide my blank disks with my stash!
  
  You know, maybe that musical group was making copies of their own cds to sell for a few bucks at shows....

  7.11.2008 00:34 #2

• beanos66

  Blank discs illegal in brazil? Harsh!

  7.11.2008 12:21 #3

• YOBUZZB

  D@mn! What's next? Next it will be illegal to form a band and sell the music you make, unless the band is under the umbrella of an entity like the RIAA in Brazil!

  7.11.2008 16:57 #4

• varnull

  Hey hey.. that already happens.. for years the RIAA have been collecting my royalties, but won't pay them out to me unless I join. They have even been forcibly collecting royalties on live recordings of my songs I released free under the creative commons license.
  
  They don't work for the artists.. they work for themselves... Same reason I never joined the BPI.
  

  
  
  Free open source software = made by end users who want an application to work. The flower of carnage-shura no hana..

  7.11.2008 17:08 #5

• rlessmue

  ...something isn't right here! Blank disc's??!! Oh, I'm in BIG Trouble!
  
  

  7.11.2008 20:26 #6

• Leningrad

  Thats sorta funny how they didnt stop sony and memorex, from passing the borders with the blank discs but stopped the so called pirates instead.

  7.11.2008 22:47 #7

• treyjazz

  It sounds like it wasn't a matter of having the discs that got them in trouble but that the government didn't get their cut.

  8.11.2008 10:55 #8

• susieqbbb

  This just shows how scared brazil is about piracy.
  
  Considering that most of the people that live in brazil will just go home and download it on the internet so really you are not stoping jack

  8.11.2008 10:55 #9