THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, July 4, 1994 TAG: 9407020019
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CRAIG A. SHAPIRO, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 156 lines
PHIL PARKER has something at his Norfolk home that no one else in Hampton Roads does. ``Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs'' on video. He also knows where to get a copy of ``Speed.''
Here's the catch: Walt Disney Home Video isn't releasing its 1937 animated classic until Oct. 28. ``Speed'' doesn't have a release date - the high-octane hit opened in theaters less than a month ago.
The Disney film showed up at a flea market in Pennsylvania; ``Speed'' was selling for $10 a pop on street corners in Philadelphia just days after its premiere. Both are pirated tapes, illegal copies that cost the industry upwards of $250 million a year.
Around here, it's Parker's job to stop it.
The Motion Picture Association of America hired him in 1988 to bust piracy operations in its Mid-Atlantic region, a five-state spread taking in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania, plus Washington, D.C. Parker and his 12 field reps - Eliot Ness and the Video Untouchables - have seen it all, scams of every size and every degree of sophistication.
It was easy to spot the pirated ``Snow White'' and ``Speed'' tapes. Besides the dubious availability, the pictures are almost unwatchable and the sound is awful. Most likely, Parker said, somebody snuck a camcorder into a theater, taped the movies, then ran off who-knows-how-many dupes.
Why pay even $10? ``Someone hoping to get something for nothing,'' he said.
But busting those small-time outfits reaps dividends. Parker, a career FBI man before retiring in 1986, works them as he would a drug bust: backward, to get to the source.
Like that warehouse in Fairfax. In May 1993, when Parker and the FBI went in - the MPAA has no enforcement powers, so they must accompany lawmen on busts - they found 346 VCRs connected together copying ``everything that was current.'' Sophisticated cameras and printing equipment were being used to duplicate the covers. Some 50,000 tapes were confiscated, capping a six-month investigation.
``Usually, the FBI doesn't get involved unless it's significant,'' Parker said. ``Copyright law is part of the FBI's responsibility; in this case, it was a sufficiently large operation for them to take control of the case.''
The bust, the biggest since the MPAA set up its anti-piracy office in the mid-'70s, started with a tip to a field rep.
``This man had been in a building and saw a large number of VCRs,'' Parker said. ``He happened to know the field rep in that area and told him. We then began our investigation - who owned the building, getting names from public sources and so forth. In the meantime, the guy moved, just pulled up everything and moved from Maryland to Virginia.
``It took a few days to locate the new place then find out where he was shipping. Basic surveillance. We followed trucks to stores all over the East Coast. Then we went to the FBI and presented them with probable cause.''
About half the tapes, Chinese and Korean titles sold and rented at Asian markets, were returned because it couldn't be determined who held the copyrights, but the two men running the warehouse pleaded guilty. Sentencing is pending. Violation of the Copyright Act carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Last December, Parker closed down a lab in Philadelphia that had 82 VCRs cranking away, day and night. Last month, the MPAA's New York office confiscated more than 5,500 tapes from a Queens lab running 124 VCRs.
It's no surprise that those kinds of operations pop up around big cities. ``It's like any business,'' Parker said, ``you go where the people are.'' Ninety percent of the MPAA investigations, though, involve small and mid-sized rental stores and flea-market vendors such as:
The guy in Luray who bought pirated tapes up North then did a weekly sales swing down Interstates 81, 64 and 95.
The store owner in Richmond who either purchased one or two legitimate tapes, or rented them from another place, and made his own dupes.
And, in February, the Movie Tyme store in Hampton, where 747 tapes were confiscated.
Opening a case
The MPAA receives 1,500 to 2,000 calls a year on its anti-piracy hotline (1-800-NO COPYS). Leads are then passed on to its six regional offices; cases are opened on 75 percent of them. Parker averages five complaints a week in the Mid-Atlantic region. One led to the Hampton bust.
``We don't go out and say, `A-B-C store sure looks nasty,' '' Parker said. ``We wait until we're advised.''
In the Movie Tyme case, a field rep rented several titles, among them ``A Few Good Men,'' ``JFK,'' and ``Jason Goes to Hell'' (the most recent in the ``Friday the 13th) series, and determined they were illegal.
Parker took the evidence to the Newport News police, who issued a search warrant. He returned to the store with the police when the tapes were seized. The case is pending.
There are things consumers can look for to identify a pirated tape, among them the printing on the box and the labels on the cassette (see the how-to list accompanying this story). Parker also has a piece of high-tech equipment at home that he uses. It displays the picture on four small screens; by looking at the electronic footprints at the bottom, he can tell if the tape has been copied and how many times.
The MPAA ran additional tests on the Hampton tapes at its offices in Encino, Calif., and traced them to a lab in Philadelphia.
Most of Parker's field reps are ex-FBI, agents who worked on everything from bank robberies to murders to the John Walker spy case. They also track illegal cable and satellite boxes for the MPAA, and review the security at legitimate video operations.
``By choice, we look for trained investigators with law enforcement backgrounds,'' said Thomas E. Schell, communications director for the MPAA's worldwide anti-piracy office. ``Copyright violation is a violation of federal law, which is enforced by the FBI. It just kind of follows. These people know what they're doing and are well qualified.''
The man in the blue suit
It wouldn't be hard to spot Parker as the man in charge. At 58, his neat handlebar mustache and hair streaked with gray, he stands ramrod straight. The dress for a casual interview: striped shirt, regimental tie and conservative suit.
``I'm still a blue-suiter,'' he said with a laugh.
Parker graduated from Great Bridge High School in 1954, majored in Spanish at Old Dominion, then studied Russian at Indiana University. He taught for a year at Cox High School, served in the Air Force as a language specialist, and taught some more. In 1965, he joined the FBI, working in counter-intelligence. A Washington Post magazine article about spies in the District of Columbia featured Parker.
``The FBI had always intrigued me,'' he said. ``Basically, I tried to do it to the bad guys before they could do it to us.''
From 1983-86, he was deputy assistant director for intelligence at FBI headquarters. After retiring, Parker took a year off to knock around his comfortable home overlooking Broad Creek. In 1987, he went to work as a security consultant, holding seminars on crisis management and protection of assets, and doing some private-eye work for local attorneys.
Working with the MPAA, he said, presents a different kind of challenge. ``It's interesting. Certainly, the pressure isn't the same as before.''
But it does keep him busy. In late June, he was working cases in Charleston, W.Va., and Bethlehem, Pa., where 637 cassettes were seized, recent titles like ``The Pelican Brief'' and ``Tombstone.'' Last week, he was back in Philadelphia closing down another lab, this one running 50 VCRs. His crew carted out 2,000 tapes and 5,000 labels.
It's a seasonal thing, Parker said. Piracy increases with the warm weather and the opening of more flea markets. He also sees an upswing when major titles go on the market, so he's girding for the fall releases of ``Jurassic Park'' and ``Snow White.''
All of which means he'll be adding to the 4,000 confiscated tapes he's holding in a storage shed on Military Highway. An impressive collection by any standard, but they don't hold much appeal.
Parker rarely watches videos.
``I'm old-fashioned,'' he said. ``I go to the movie theater.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by Tamara Voninski, Staff
Norfolk's Phil Parker was hired by the MPAA to bust video piracy
operations in the Mid-Atlantic region.
Color photos
The four movies pictured here are among the many films that have
appeared in pirated video editions: Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs;
Tombstone; Speed; and A Few Good Men
Photo
``JFK'' was among the pirated tapes confiscated in the Hampton Movie
Tyme bust.
by CNB