by Elena Chong
A CHINESE national who had 48 infringing copies of pirated
movies was fined $48,000 on Wednesday.
Guan Zhenbang, 24, a sales manager, had pleaded guilty to four
charges of having pirated recordings published by Universal City
Studios, Sony Pictures Releasing International Corporation and
Paramount Pictures Corporation, for sale at Sim Lim Square at
Rochor Canal Road on April 23.
Among the recordings he had were Bourne Identity, Spiderman,
Quantum of Solace, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and
Shrek.
The court heard that Guan came to Singapore in 2005 to pursue a
course in electrical engineering at Ngee Ann Polytechnic and
subsequently at Nanyang Technological University under a
scholarship programme from the Ministry of Education.
Initially, he started a small business in digital photo frames
and subsequently sold media players, which was highly
successful.
When he noticed that more customers were heading to a
neighbouring shop to buy hard disks with pre-loaded movies, he
decided to do the same by paying a customer to buy one from the
shop.
Later, he bought more movies from the neighbouring shop
surreptitiously and collected them for use in his business. He
amassed nine catalogues of movie titles which he could offer to his
customers when they bought the hard disks.
A blank hard disk would be sold for $150 while a hard disk
uploaded with movies, $200 to $220.
A police party raided the shop and kiosk at the building and
seized the hard disks at the building that day, and the hard disks
with pirated movies.
He could have been fined up to $10,000 per article. Eight other
similar charges were considered during his sentencing.
