Customs officers arrested a 40-year-old man yesterday for online copyright infringement by using a new monitoring system.
The man is accused of uploading a large quantity of suspected infringing copyright works to the Internet for other people to download, with the aim of making money.
Officers arrested him in Yuen Long yesterday and confiscated two computers on which were stored a large amount of comics, local and overseas films, and TV dramas from Hong Kong and Japan, which he distributed on Internet discussion forums.
It is the first time the department has used the Lineament Monitoring System 1 Plus to catch a suspected copyright infringer.
Briefing the media today, Customs' Group Head of Intellectual Property Investigation (Operations) Wong Yim-pui said the system automatically searches discussion forums and detects suspected intellectual property infringement activities.
It is capable of capturing evidence related to selected messages, including performing an automatic download of the content for further analysis. It will alert Customs officers of any suspected cases for detailed investigation.
The system, jointly developed by Customs and the University of Hong Kong, was completed early this year and has been in full operation since July.
