SINGAPORE – A man who sold illegal streaming devices at Sim Lim Square was sentenced to 10 months’ jail in the first such prosecution of its kind.
On Oct 24, Ge Xin, 37, admitted to infringing the copyright of works owned by organisations including Disney, Netflix, Paramount Pictures and the Football Association Premier League.
Top Gun: Maverick, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, and an English Premier League (EPL) match between Liverpool and Manchester City were among the content available on the illegal streaming devices.
Ge Xin, a Singaporean, sold the devices that could allow users to unlawfully gain access to such copyrighted works.
His two shops at Sim Lim Square, MT Gadget+ and Grandnew, were fined $200,000 and $100,000 respectively under the Copyright Act.
The conviction of Ge Xin and his companies were the first such prosecutions under Section 150 of the Copyright Act, which targets copyright infringement on commercial dealers of illegal streaming devices.
This comes after simultanenous raids at retail shops in Sim Lim Square in October 2022 by officers from the Criminal Investigation Department.
Four women and 13 men were arrested for their suspected involvement in the sale of these devices. More than 2,500 of them valued at about $500,000 were seized.
Illegal streaming devices are typically pre-installed with computer programs to allow unauthorised access to copyrighted work.
But they come with risks, as some contain malware, which can expose users to cyber threats like online scams.
In the case of Ge Xin and his companies, Deputy Public Prosecutor Christopher Ong said that in 2020 and 2021, Grandnew had received three letters from the Football Association Premier League to stop selling the illegal devices as they infringed its copyright.
DPP Ong said although Ge Xin read the letters, he continued to authorise his companies to sell the devices.
MT Gadget+, which began selling such devices in 2018, sold each for around $115 to $220 and the profit margin for each gadget was around $43 to $80, said the DPP.
Grandnew sold the devices in 2018 and earned a monthly profit of about $5,000.
In October 2022, both shops were raided and 499 illegal streaming devices were seized.