Simpsons Movie Stolen In Sydney For Internet

Editorial

The first known pirated copy of The Simpsons Movie to make it onto the Internet was tracked to a Sydney home raided by Australian police Friday, according to AP reports. A 21-year-old man is to appear in court in October when he will be formally charged, the Australian Federal Police said.

Details of the likely charge and penalties have not been made public. The Motion Picture Association industry group said the investigation involved News Corporation's Twentieth Century Fox movie studio, Australian police and the private investigation group Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT).

The federation said the illegal Simpsons Movie copy was the first on the Internet and was recorded by a cell phone in a Sydney cinema on July 26 -- hours before its release in most of the world. Officials said the movie was uploaded to a video-sharing site based in the United States before it hit U.S. theatres July 27.

"Within 72 hours of making and uploading this unauthorized recording, AFACT had tracked it to other streaming sites and P2P (peer-to-peer) systems, where it had been illegally downloaded in excess of 110,000 times, and in all probability, copied and sold as a pirate DVD all over the world," AFACT executive director Adrianne Pecotic said. 

Andrew L. Urban, August 2007