Two men from the UK have been arrested following the leak of The Expendables 3 before its scheduled release date.
The copy of the movie was viewed hundreds of thousands of times and reportedly lost Lionsgate, the film’s production company, $10 million.
Officers from the UK Intellectual Property Crime Unit (Pipcu) arrested the men, a 36-year-old and 33-year-old in Upton, Wirral, and Dewsbury, West Yorkshire. They were arrested on suspicion of taking the film from a private cloud server and uploading it to the web. They released the movie online back in July, just under a month before the film’s August release date. In a statement to the BBC, head of Pipcu, Det Ch Insp Danny Medlycott said that this was not “a victimless crime”.
“By downloading illegal music, film, TV and books, not only are you exposing your own computer to the risk of viruses and malware, but you are also putting hard-working people’s livelihoods at risk as piracy threatens the security of thousands of jobs in the UK’s creative industries.”
Source: BBC News
