California man sentenced to four years in jail for criminal copyright infringement

2010-12-15 02:08:51 GMT+7 (ICT)

SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA (BNO NEWS) -- A 55-year-old California man was sentenced to four years in prison for running a company that engaged in selling copies of software and entertainment over the course of several years, prosecutors said on Tuesday.

Julius Chow Lieh Liu of El Cerrito, a city in Contra Costa County, had been convicted by a federal grand jury in June for criminal copyright infringement and trafficking in counterfeit labels. During the trial, evidence showed that Liu had engaged through his company, SuperDVD, in the large scale infringement of thousands of copies of Symantec software, music CD's and movie DVD's over the course of several years.

Liu was initially indicted on November 29, 2006 and was charged with replicating and/or selling thousands of counterfeit copies of Norton Anti-Virus, music CD's which included the Beatles and DVD's of 'Crouching Tiger' and 'Hidden Dragon.'

The sentence was handed down by U.S. District Court Judge James Ware following a jury trial on three counts in violation of criminal copyright infringement and one count of trafficking in counterfeit labels. Besides the 48 month jail sentence, judge Ware also sentenced Liu to a three-year period of supervised release.

Liu currently remains free on a $500,000 surety bond and is scheduled to start serving his sentence on February 14, 2011.

-- © BNO News All rights reserved 2010-12-15

Wish they would do that here in Thailand! But one guy only? - nah - this is a prejudice case against an Asian in the US for PR purposes.

DVD's of 'Crouching Tiger' and 'Hidden Dragon.'

It is 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' and is one movie, not an example of two...

Wish they would do that here in Thailand! But one guy only? - nah - this is a prejudice case against an Asian in the US for PR purposes.

On what basis did you make your claim?

You do understand that the jury was drawn from the county population right?

Do you know anything about the county demographics? Did you even bother to check? Of the 1.2 million or so residents, Approx. 40% of the population are visible "minorities" and 25% are asian.

That means that there were going to be a lot of smiling non white faces on that jury.

Are you saying that the members of the jury convicted because they hate asians?

Hanley Chew is the Assistant U.S. Attorney who prosecuted the case with the assistance of Lauri Gomez. The prosecution is the result of a three-year investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Go read the case before you claim bias. Case #: CR 06-00772 B The criminal was guilty.

It would appear that Mr. Chow ran a legitimate CD/DVD duplication business and did his unauthorized copying as a side-line ... this was not some hidden operation in a remote location.