In a two-day operation, police seized over 1 million Blu-ray discs worth over 100 million rubles ($2.8 million).
"Two large warehouses and over 20 distribution points, storing and selling pirated Blu-ray discs...were uncovered," Filipp Zolotnitsky said.
He said that the Blu-ray discs seized contained films in the DVD format, some of them of a low quality. He also noted that the discs could be viewed only on a PC, and not on Blu-ray players. Pirates sold the discs for 1,000 rubles ($28), while licensed discs go for over 1,500 rubles ($42).
A total of 20 people, including the suspected manufacturers and sellers of the discs, were detained. A criminal case has been launched.
The Blu-ray technology uses a "blue" (technically violet) laser to read and write data. Genuine Blu-ray discs can have a capacity of up to 50GB, almost six times the capacity of a two-layer DVD and were created mainly to store high-definition video and audio.
