Film pirates targeting 'Spider-man 3'

LOS ANGELES, May 5 (UPI) -- Police have arrested at least one man for trying to videotape "Spider-Man 3" inside AMC Loews Lincoln Square theater in New York.

The Sony Pictures film has already made an appearance as a bootleg DVD, with arrests being made in Malaysia and Argentina and numerous DVD's being recovered from video pirates in Chicago and New York, The Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.

The pirated "Spider-Man 3" DVDs recovered in the United States, were traced back to a screening in Hong Kong.

Sony also revealed that there are already at least three pirated versions of the film circulating on the Internet, one from Hong Kong, one from France and the third from Italy.

The studio is fighting hard to stop pirated versions of the blockbuster from hitting the streets or the Internet.

"It's gone better than it could be," said Jeff Blake, head of Sony's marketing and distribution. "I guess we can take comfort in the fact that no one has a really good copy. And I think the theaters are really in enforcement with us because they know it hurts revenue."