film piracy saga is pure hollywood

Six months later, Joan Bosten drew to a close on the trail of a suspected Russian Pirate.
She hid the dirty stuff.
She thinks the young man is killing her film distribution business.
Now he\'s in her line of sight.
Bosten looked out through the window of a minivan\'s curtain, and she took some pictures with a telephoto lens. Click.
Suspected pirates and a customer (
Actually a friend of Bosten)
He just bought 80 pirated DVDs owned by Bosten. Click.
The buyer and the seller shook hands. Click.
The target drove away after jumping into his bmw suv.
Maybe he\'s leaving?
What happens next is the culmination of Bosten\'s relentless efforts to save her Malibu --
A film distribution business of a suspected piracy gang linked to Russia.
With the help of a detective named Jack, an actress who plays \"Natalia\" and Oleg Kumar
The husband of life, Robert Redford, who was once called the Soviet Union
58-time theateryear-
The old grandmother planned an amateur tingling operation.
\"I don\'t think he knows who he\'s going to deal with,\" said the groom, speaking of the person they thought was running a pirate gang.
\"She\'s a street fighter.
Hollywood\'s leading film studios are not the only victims of movie piracy.
Ask the owners of many small production and distribution companies in Southern California and they will tell you that their survival depends on the fight against counterfeit products.
But it\'s one thing to say that we need to stop.
It is another matter to do so.
This is where Bosten is different.
The Santa Monica native is a short and lively woman who is proficient in five languages and is passionate about Russian fairy tales.
She and her husband used their actor friends and their knowledge of the Russian immigrant community to penetrate into an anti-even Hollywood
Pirate assistant Film Bureau. of America.
Borsten has international distribution rights for 1,200 Russian animated films, including the little train of the Dragon ashkovo, the story of the czar Sultan, and the beautiful vasilila
\"She sells DVDs of these titles to small specialty stores serving the Russian community across the country.
But in December, she noticed a sudden drop in home prices in Los Angeles.
Jove ordered the film for her company.
Worried, Bosten visited a bookstore in the studio, posing as an American woman and buying cartoons for her adopted Russian grandson.
She found six pirated films from Jove video, including one of her favorite, \"I\'m looking for you,\" a Russian Tom and Jerry. type series.
The video seems to be homemade.
Each has the same shell, color plug-in for copying, poor quality of pictures and sound.
Each car costs $10, about half the normal retail price. \"I was shocked.
We can\'t sit still and lose the second-
Largest market in the United StatesS.
\"For a pirate who runs a house selection in Hollywood,\" Borsten said, using industry terminology for piracy.
\"I have to figure it out.
Borsten and Vidov are no longer the first to take action to protect their business.
They have been involved in many legal struggles over the past decade to protect the copyright of their film librarymade feature-
Rudyard Kipling\'s book of the jungle and a series of animated folk stories with the voices of American, French and Spanish stars.
First, Borsten invited a Russian friend to visit other Russian music stores and bookstores in West Hollywood and San Fernando Valley.
The woman purchased several pirated movie videos from Jove titles and reported that the owner told her to come back in a few weeks when they would receive a new supply.
Borsten suspected that the stores were purchased from a supplier.
Next, she must find him.
So she and Vidov, who are also her business partners, wrote a script called Natalya, described in court records as \"unscrupulous hard-
Edged business businesswoman is looking for pirated tapes at the lowest possible price.
\"Vidov spoke the word among the Russian actors he knew and soon found a perfect actress:\" Her range is very good.
She can play a peasant woman or Princess.
This is the best role in Hollywood.
\"Nataliya\" accepted the character and chatted with the owner and soon came up with a mobile phone number for an illegal cartoon supplier.
His name is Dmitry.
The owner said he imported pirated films directly from Gorbushka, Moscow\'s notorious fake market.
Next, Natalia called Dmitry.
She said she and her husband, Andre, are opening a Russian video store in Palo Alto and want to buy some cheap DVDs.
Dmitry agreed to meet with Andre (
Actually another friend of Borsten)
In the parking lot of little Carl.
Hollywood Sunset Boulevard restaurant.
Dmitry opened the rear hatch of his black BMW and opened six cartons with cd and dvd.
He also handed over the catalogue of about 5,000 films to Andre, including not only many of Jove titles, but also mainstream Hollywood films such as Shrek and Basic Instinct 2. \"According to a statement filed by the court.
Andre found the item suspicious.
There is no liner note or label identifying the name or address of the distributor.
When Andrea complained that there was no packaging, Dmitry advised him to buy a machine and pack it himself.
Andre bought 80 DVDs for $400.
Bosten is very close, but not close enough.
She still does not have the last name and business address of the suspect.
So she turned to Jack Schmidt, a senior Hollywood private detective and the owner of the secret investigation agency.
She hired the chubby former American. S.
Former Army intelligence analyst in connection with another piracy case.
Pirated movies are not his expertise.
He is more used to tracking Hollywood cheating spouses.
But Schmidt likes Bosten: \"She\'s an honest, hard-working person.
Work lady who pays bills on time.
\"Besides,\" she fell into a conspiracy of all this.
\"When Borsten got word from the client that Dmitry was working outside an office on North La Brea Avenue near Sunset Boulevard, she informed Schmidt.
He drove past the office and saw a sign on the door: Europe and Russia.
Schmidt also checked Dmitry\'s license plate and got a last name: Feynman.
Borsten wants to make sure it all adds up.
She checked the city records and found that 36-year-old Dmitry felmann had a European and Russian business license at the same address on La Brea Avenue.
The man posing as Natalia\'s husband (
Andre Violentyev)
Bought another one in feyerman\'s office.
Schmidt and Bosten stopped the van and waited.
Violentyev later stated in an affidavit that during the course of the transaction, Fayerman explained that a \"legal\" dvd would cost him more.
Fayerman left with a BMW and Schmidt and Borsten followed him.
But a few minutes later they lost him in the traffic.
Schmidt is ready to give up, but there will be no give-up in Bosten: \"Jack, go get it.
Five minutes later, they chased Feynman on ferfax Avenue and followed him to Interstate 10 west.
Borsten and Schmidt followed Fayerman to four points at the Sheraton Calver city hotel, where Schmidt took pictures of him leaving half an hour after entering with a heavy briefcase.
A staff member at the front desk told Schmidt that a crew member of Aeroflot, a Russian airline, had recently checked in.
Two weeks later, court records showed that Schmidt again found Feynman at four, and this time he spoke to someone who appeared to be a member of the Aeroflot crew who stayed at the hotel.
The man handed in two copies. looking bags.
\"In the bag, I can clearly identify the long cylinder --
\"Type shapes, there are three to four cylinder shapes in each bag,\" Schmidt said in a statement . \".
\"The diameter of the cylinder shape seems to be consistent with the size of the DVD or disc.
\"Things have begun to accumulate for Borsten.
Some of her clients told her that they thought feyermanli imported Russian-made pirated DVDs with smugglers.
Despite Russian President Vladimir Putin\'s commitment to resolve the issue, according to a recent report by the International Intellectual Property Union, the number of factories in the country that produce fake DVDs and CDs and export them has soared from two in 1996 to 47 in January, a private alliance representing the United StatesS. copyright-
Based on industry.
Many experts have accused the Russian government of lax regulation.
\"They have to start enforcing their laws and destroy the manufacturers of these CDs,\" the representative said . \". Howard L. Berman (D-Valley Village)
He believes that Russia should be asked to fight piracy before allowing it to join the World Trade Organization.
A senior member of the House Court, the Internet and Intellectual Property Justice Subcommittee, Berman, had previously asked Bosten to testify to Congress on piracy.
This is a bread. and-
\"She had a butter problem with other small companies like her,\" Berman said . \".
Borsten in, with her sled fruit, submitted a $11 document
Million erman and the owner of the eight stores she accused of carrying his merchandise and filed millions of federal copyright infringement lawsuits.
She then persuaded a judge to authorize an interim restraining order against feyerman and those shops and approved the confiscation of any fake dvd of her title from his office.
On a sultry afternoon of June, accompanied by a rush
One hour of traffic blocked the rambreia Avenue, with five federal bailiffs parking outside Europe and Russia.
Schmidt, Jeffrey Myers, Bosten\'s attorney, and two courts.
Designated Russian translation-
He\'s been waiting across the street from a Russian cafe. -
Join the bailiff in front of fayyeman.
Bosten joined them later.
At the court\'s order, a flustered Felman led the entire team into two sultry rooms full of DVDs and CDs and plastic contractions --wrap machine.
When the translator browses his merchandise, felmann walks back and forth to check the title against the list of movies in Jove catalog.
In addition to Hollywood movies such as Superman and The Polar Express, they also found 250 fake animated movie DVDs, only Borsten has the right to sell in the United StatesS.
\"I don\'t know what to say,\" she said when she helped the lawyer collect evidence.
\"We found what we didn\'t expect to find here.
I\'m a little overwhelmed.
Fayerman denied that he had done something wrong and made no criminal charges.
\"I don\'t know all of this because I\'m a legal company,\" he told reporters who witnessed the raid.
But a few days later, feyerman did not appear in the United States. S.
The district court raised questions about the injunction.
Last week, in the secret settlement of the Bosten lawsuit, he agreed to pay her an undisclosed amount to make up for her loss.
Felman admitted last week that it was wrong for him to sell a copy of Bosten\'s work, although he said he did not know that she owned the United StatesS.
Distribution rights.
He said in crappy English, \"I settled.
I\'m out of business.
\"Offices in Europe and Russia have been emptied.
Borsten did not deceive herself because her problem was over.
In her experience, even if you beat a pirate, the other one eventually took his place.
But she will be ready when this happens.
\"I think we won a big fight, but there is a bigger fight to fight,\" she said.