by Elena Chong
A CHINESE national who had 48 infringing copies of pirated movies was fined $48,000 on Wednesday.
Guan Zhenbang, 24, a sales manager, had pleaded guilty to four charges of having pirated recordings published by Universal City Studios, Sony Pictures Releasing International Corporation and Paramount Pictures Corporation, for sale at Sim Lim Square at Rochor Canal Road on April 23.
Among the recordings he had were Bourne Identity, Spiderman, Quantum of Solace, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Shrek.
The court heard that Guan came to Singapore in 2005 to pursue a course in electrical engineering at Ngee Ann Polytechnic and subsequently at Nanyang Technological University under a scholarship programme from the Ministry of Education.
Initially, he started a small business in digital photo frames and subsequently sold media players, which was highly successful.
When he noticed that more customers were heading to a neighbouring shop to buy hard disks with pre-loaded movies, he decided to do the same by paying a customer to buy one from the shop.
Later, he bought more movies from the neighbouring shop surreptitiously and collected them for use in his business. He amassed nine catalogues of movie titles which he could offer to his customers when they bought the hard disks.
A blank hard disk would be sold for $150 while a hard disk uploaded with movies, $200 to $220.
A police party raided the shop and kiosk at the building and seized the hard disks at the building that day, and the hard disks with pirated movies.
He could have been fined up to $10,000 per article. Eight other similar charges were considered during his sentencing.
sweeeee
foreign talent, somemore under scholarship with a place in NTU. yum yum
kanninar another one. no wonder we have to pay tx. i don;t mind te taxes goes to civil servants our very own sgporeans pay, butto feed and giv them floor traps ten star hotel really boils my blood!
pls sg review the law and punishmet on floor traps commiting crimes here.
those that do not demage property and hurt kill take lives just confiscate their owned properties forfeits their study loan and whatever weath status and send them back after a light sentnece in jail to clean 1 month toilets. that way all the prison toiletsa no need to hire foreign talent and sg get a new source of income.
win liao lor... wonder how much of the 48k fine he is paying actually come from our tax payer...
I bet his scholarship is worth more than 48k so he still earns after paying for the fine
MOE scholarship so no jail................
more reasons to vote out PAP............
someone with good English please write to Straits Times say PAP spend our money on scholarships on these farking foreigners and so no jail time............. see if they'll publish or not..........
FTs have priorities.
Originally posted by Asromanista2001:MOE scholarship so no jail................
more reasons to vote out PAP............
someone with good English please write to Straits Times say PAP spend our money on scholarships on these farking foreigners and so no jail time............. see if they'll publish or not..........
hallo 55yrs old indian bro
see my point is not tp waste our taxpayers money on those floor traps who commit petty crimes, non vilent one sthat do not damage people property, rape, hurt and kill others, so on. provided also the victims or directly invovled do not wnat to take legal actions. other wise more violent ones must giv them hell in jail. give them all the rotan and i think the rotan must now modify to h ae the 'made in singapore' impression on the whip lashing so that when it cracked down prmanently will have the 'made in spore' impression on them so they can show and remember that the lashes were from sgpore.
if not lots of them nationalirties floor traps just think eventually come here commitcrime can still stay in ten star hotel. the longer they stay here the more tax money eats us. they must be made t clean toilets and make them clean clean if not lengthen their enetnce to cut grass gardening and do jobs to pay back the black bean rice money