Huge boom in fake DVDs

More than 1.8 million pirate DVDs were seized in Britain last year - but experts say that is just the tip of the iceberg.

The figure, representing a 400 per cent rise on the previous year, is dwarfed by the number of illegal discs on the market.

Most of the confiscated discs are box-office hits. Finding Nemo - one of the year's biggest cinema successes - tops the list of pirate DVDs.

The discs cost as little as 30p each to produce, and organised crime syndicates are behind much of the piracy, attracted by the massive profits to be had.

James Angell is director of operations at the Federation Against Copyright Theft, which works with police and trading standards agencies to catch pirates. He said: "Last year was really the year of the DVD as player prices dropped so significantly. For every disc we stop, we know five are getting through. What we found is minuscule compared with the number of counterfeits in circulation."

DVD players can now be bought in the high street for as little as £30, and the internet and rise in popularity of DVD recorders for home computers have also led to an explosion in the number of counterfeit films on sale.

The crime syndicates involved are often Asian. "Almost all the problem is caused by Malaysia, China and Pakistan," said Mr Angell. "There is a huge amount of money to be made here. It's really the big hits that sell. People see them on a market stall for £3, or a disc with three films for £10, and can't resist.

"The biggest problem is the quality of the films. Often it is simply camcorder footage from someone who has gone to the cinema. You hear people talking, see people get up and even see the camera dropped sometimes."

In addition to Finding Nemo, the most popular pirated discs last year included Love Actually. This month has already seen a huge trade in copies of the latest Lord Of The Rings film.

The number of pirated Finding Nemo discs was "in the hundreds of thousands," said Mr Angell, who predicted that this year will see the end of the VHS tape. It is expected that, as broadband connections become commonplace, downloading films from the internet is likely to become far easier. A new generation of gadgets enabling computer-owners to beam movies wirelessly to their TV is also expected to increase the pirating problem.

"The internet is more of a problem every day but, for the moment, it is not really viable," said Mr Angell. "We really want to go after the huge crime syndicates and cut these discs off before they get to the market stalls, but we definitely have one eye on the internet for the future."