PIRACY RULING AGAINST FIRM.

Byline: Greg Hernandez Staff Writer

A federal judge in Los Angeles has ordered MasterSurf Inc. and its owner to pay the motion picture studios $23.8 million for copyright infringement after charging users of its Film88.com Web site to download illegally pirated films.

Tan Soo Leong, owner and president of MasterSurf, must also pay attorneys fees and destroy any pirated movie copies on his company's servers or in his possession.

John G. Malcolm, the Motion Picture Association of America's senior vice president and director of worldwide anti-piracy operations, said MasterSurf had set up an international web of servers designed to shelter its illegal venture.

``This case proves that some people will go to extravagant lengths to profiteer from pirating movies,'' Malcom said.

MasterSurf was sued and defaulted in a California court in July 2002. The studios continued to pursue Leong, who was living in Malaysia, under the Hague Convention.

Also on the movie piracy front, a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Tuesday was ordered to pay $300,000 in damages for violating the academy's signed agreement covering the use of award DVD screeners.

In a civil suit brought by Warner Bros. Entertainment, Carmine Caridi was ordered to pay the maximum in statutory damages by U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Wilson for willful copyright infringement.

Caridi sent his screeners of the Warner Bros. films ``Mystic River'' and ``The Last Samurai'' to Russell Sprague in Chicago who duplicated them, resulting in them being illegally posted on peer-to-peer sites.

Sprague was arrested last April and pleaded guilty to a criminal charge of violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. He has not yet been sentenced.

Greg Hernandez, [phone]

greg.hernandez(at)dailynews.com