Police on Thursday seized 120,000 pirate music CDs and nabbed a dozen counterfeiters in a pair of early morning raids.
The crackdown, carried out in the northern city of Taoyuan and southern city of Tainan, came after two months of surveillance following a tip from the London-based International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI,
In Tainan City, police seized more than 100,000 CDs from a warehouse and captured 11 mem-bers of the counterfeiting ring.
In a second raid, police raided a warehouse in Taoyuan, discovering more than 20,000 pirated music CDs and VCDs. The street value of the illegal discs was estimated to exceed NT$6 million.
The two counterfeiting rings were not connected, according to police, who estimated the 120,000 CDs could have been sold for NT$40 million (US$1.2 million).
"We are very happy that we have cracked the counterfeiting rings," IFPI's Taiwan supervisor Luo Kuo-jui (
"It shows Taiwan's determination to fight recorded music piracy and to protect intellectual property."
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