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TUCSON—An indictment was unsealed today in Tucson charging four naturalized U.S. citizens with a scheme which involved the unauthorized reproduction and distribution of copyrighted DVDs which netted them approximately $3 million dollars. A federal grand jury in Tucson returned a 10-count indictment against Chuen Han Yuen (aka Jason Yuen), 29; Man Yam Yuen, 58; Tsao Ping Ng, 54; and Sin L. Yuen (aka Michelle Yuen), 31, all originally of Hong Kong, charging them with Conspiracy, Mail Fraud, Wire Fraud and Copyright Infringement. Jason Yuen, Man Yam Yuen and Tsao Ping Ng were arrested without incident today by Special Agents with...

Jhannet Sejas and her boyfriend were celebrating her 19th birthday by taking in a matinee showing of the hit movie "Transformers" at the theater at Ballston Common mall. Sejas was enjoying the movie so much that she decided to film a short clip of the sci-fi adventure's climax to get her little brother hyped to go see it. Minutes later, two Arlington County police officers were pointing their flashlights at the young couple in the darkened theater and ordering them out. They confiscated the digital camera as evidence and charged Sejas, a Marymount University sophomore and Annandale resident, with a...

A moviegoer caught secretly recording the sci-fi blockbuster "Transformers" has been charged with unauthorized use of a video camera in a theater in the first arrest under a new New York City law that stiffened penalties for pirating films. A criminal complaint accuses Kalidou Diallo of slipping a video recorder, video player and remote control into a sneak preview of the film at a Bronx theater Monday night. "This is the first time someone has been arrested and charged with the new illegal camcording law," City Hall spokesman Jason Post said Thursday. In May, Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed legislation that...

Accused Leader of Counterfeit Motion Picture Network Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy to Traffic in Counterfeit Goods Guilty Plea Stems From First Joint IPR Investigation by ICE and Chinese Authorities GULFPORT, MS.- Michael A. Holt, Special Agent-in-Charge for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in New Orleans, and Dunn Lampton,United States Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi, today announced that a man arrested on charges resulting from the first joint Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) investigation by U.S. and Chinese authorities has been convicted in federal court in Mississippi. Earlier today, Randolph Hobson Guthrie III, a U.S. citizen, entered a plea...

BEIJING -- Legendary explorer Marco Polo's journey to China lasted 24 years. This is the kind of commitment that foreign media executives leading the way into China today say they will have to show their hosts if they are to succeed at making a business out of entertaining 1.3 billion Chinese. They continue their push into China with new partnerships and ventures taking shape on a regular basis, but the majors realize that it might be 20 or even 30 years before they can reap the full benefits of these exploratory ventures. Executives who are leading the way into China...

A Princeton University student has published instructions for disabling the new anti-copying measures being tested on CDs by BMG -- and they're as simple as holding down a computer's Shift key. In a paper published on his Web site Monday, Princeton Ph.D. student John Halderman explained how he disabled a new kind of copy-protection technology, distributed as part of a new album by BMG soul artist Anthony Hamilton. Under normal circumstances, the antipiracy software is automatically loaded onto a Windows machine whenever the Hamilton album is run in a computer's CD drive, making traditional copying or MP3 ripping impossible....

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Hollywood's movie studios face a key test in their battle to defend copyright holders from digital pirates, when a federal court in California this Friday hears a case filed by a maker of software that allows users to copy DVDs. At stake for the studios are potentially billions of dollars in revenues that would be lost if nearly perfect digital copies of movies on DVD were sold in large quantities on the black market or circulated on the Internet in digital files. But the privately held software maker, St. Louis-based 321 Studios, argues that its software...