Suspects behind Expendables 3 leak arrested in UK

Anti-piracy police have arrested two men on suspicion of leaking action film The Expendables 3 before its release date.

Detectives from the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (Pipcu) arrested two men in Upton, Wirral, and Dewsbury, West Yorkshire.

Copies of the film began circulating online from 25 July. The official US release date was not until 15 August.

The high-quality pirated copy was viewed hundreds of thousands of times.

The men, a 36-year-old and 33-year-old, were arrested at their homes and taken to local police stations.

The pair are suspected of stealing the film from a cloud-based system before uploading it on to the internet.

Lionsgate Films, which made the movie and referred the case to Pipcu, claims that the pirated copy had a significant financial impact on the film-makers, costing them millions of pounds in the UK alone.

Head of Pipcu, Det Ch Insp Danny Medlycott said of the action: "Today's operation shows you the significant impact intellectual property crime has on our creative industries, with millions of pounds being lost as a result of criminal actions.

"The public need to be aware that piracy is not a victimless crime. By downloading illegal music, film, TV and books, not only are you exposing your own computer to the risk of viruses and malware, but you are also putting hard-working people's livelihoods at risk as piracy threatens the security of thousands of jobs in the UK's creative industries."

:story: BBC News