Motion Pictures Association (MPA) and anti-piracy authorities across Asia Pacific have launched Operation Blackout, a year-long region-wide anti-piracy enforcement campaign. Operation Blackout will cover Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand. The campaign’s first raid was conducted by Taiwanese authorities including the Taiwan Foundation Against Copyright Theft (TFACT), which represents the MPA in the country, on a DVD-R burner lab in Taiwan’s southern-most city of Pingtung. The raid resulted in the arrest of a husband and wife team alleged to be the operators, and the seizure of 93 DVD-R burners, the most seized in a single raid in 2007. Also impounded were 25,000 pirated discs which infringe 120 MPA members’ titles including American Gangster, which is yet to be released theatrically in Taiwan, Rush Hour 3, No Reservations and Evan Almighty. The pirates distributed flyers and supplied discs across Taiwan via express delivery, and have been estimated to produce 5 million discs in a year to potentially generate revenues of $US15 million. It was the 27th burner lab raided by the Taiwanese authorities in 2007 with a total of 1,031 burners seized.