TAIPEI (Taiwan News) -- Two Japanese adult film stars thanked Taiwan's Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) and New Taipei Police for working hard to snatch two men who allegedly sold thousands of pirated versions of their adult videos.
Police received a tip that the "AVQ Online Adult Theater" (avq.52avq.co) and 52SOD Online Adult Theater were charging users a monthly fee of NT$599 (US$19) for access to pirated pornographic material from Japan. The websites used traditional characters as seen in Taiwan and were easily accessible to minors.
A police investigation found that the websites had over 10,000 users, were hosted on cloud servers based overseas, and their owners used internet protocol rerouting and other methods in an attempt to avoid being traced by local Taiwanese authorities. The websites also included online to offline (O2O) services such as online subscriptions to pornographic films and offline pick-up services, and made use of legal sex toy stores as a front for illegal piracy.
Diagram showing network used by pirated porn ring. (CIB image)
The CIB estimates that the sales of the physical media alone netted the owners over NT$10 million and the market value of the items seized during the raids was over NT$50 million.
On May 6, the First Brigade of the CIB joined officers from the Yonghe Precinct of the New Taipei City Police Department to raid 10 sex shops which were allegedly selling pirated adult videos in Taipei and New Taipei City's Yonghe District. During the raids, police arrested a 58-year-old suspect surnamed Liu (劉) and another male suspect surnamed Yang (楊) at the Old Guanghua Market and seized 30,000 pirated pornographic DVDs and 13 web servers.
To show their gratitude towards Taiwan police efforts, a Japanese adult film studio sent representatives to present Taiwanese police with a DVD made by Japanese adult film stars Yoshitaka Nene and Tsukasa Aoi in which they thanked them in Japanese for their hard work. In the video, they said, "Thank you for continuing to work hard at protecting copyrights!"
AVQ Online Adult Theater website (left), DVDs seized (right). (CIB photo)
The CIB said that the men have been charged for copyright infringement, public broadcasting of copyrighted material without permission, and other offenses on behalf of the Taiwanese office of Japan’s Intellectual Property Promotion Association. The losses inflicted by this case of copyright infringement are estimated to exceed NT$1.1 billion, according to the CIB.
To prevent the suspects from continuing to profit from their illegal activities, authorities moved to quickly freeze NT$70 million in their assets. The case has been transferred to the Taipei District Prosecutor's Office to expand the investigation.
Police seizing pirated DVDs from sex shop. (CIB photo)
Police seizing pirated DVDs from sex shop. (CIB photo)
Japanese porn star Yoshitaka Nene thanking Taiwanese police. (CIB photo)
