The film industry is sending written warnings to 100 people who have been illegally downloading movies from the internet, vowing to take them to court next time they are caught.
The campaign comes as customs officers yesterday laid the world's first charges over suspected illegal file-sharing over the internet.
A 38-year-old Tuen Mun man was charged for allegedly uploading three Hollywood movies to the internet, from where they could be copied.
The film industry recently hired a team of up to four 'IT detectives' to track down users of the file-sharing program BitTorrent who have been downloading two local movies, House of Fury and The Eye 10.
They discovered that since March 31, House of Fury has been downloaded more than a million times around the world, while The Eye 10 has been downloaded 80,000 times since April 16.
The industry said about 4 per cent of the downloads took place in Hong Kong. It was estimated that $400 million was lost last year due to illegal internet copying of movies - almost equivalent to last year's total Hong Kong box office take of $445 million.
The IT detectives identified 3,724 Hong Kong users who downloaded House of Fury, and 2,211 who downloaded The Eye 10.