Redbox Comments on Porn-for-'Smurfs' Swap

LOS ANGELES—Acknowledging that it has an ongoing problem, but apparently determined to address the problem now and into the future, DVD kiosk rental company Redbox commented Friday on the recent complaint by a customer that a copy of Smurfs 2 he had rented contained porn. The incident reportedly happened earlier this week in the Northern California town of Stockton. According to kcra.com, "[James] Terry rented the movie Tuesday from a Redbox machine inside a Stockton Walmart store. Everything about the disc looked like the real thing, including the Smurfs 2 logo and the Redbox bar code." But when he put the disc into his DVD player while on his boat in Isleton, the people on the tape were a different sort of blue. "I saw girls in bikinis at first, and I was like, what am I watching?" he said. "And then it became more and more disturbing, with hardcore porn." KCRA.com reported, "Upon his discovery, Terry placed several calls to Redbox. A manager told him this is an ongoing problem—people dubbing porn onto the DVDs—and the company offered him 10 movies and a $2 credit." Terry told the media he also wanted to know what Redbox is doing to address the issue, and was told the company is "working on a program next year that won't allow people to make photocopies of the bar codes anymore." But Terry, who has no children, was still concerned about what the company was doing now about its porn problem. "I think if this is a mother or father with kids and they got home and they put this in the TV (and) walked away, those kids would have serious issues," he said. Friday, Redbox commented publicly on the situation, indicating that it is pursuing prosecution in the current case. The company's statement is reprinted here in its entirety: Based on Redbox’s preliminary investigation, it appears the disc rented was a fraudulent disc altered by another individual. This is an unfortunate incident and we are preparing a case to provide to local law enforcement and will work with them to aggressively pursue prosecution. Customer service is a top priority at Redbox, and we continually look for ways to prevent and deter fraud, including analyzing rental patterns and working with authorities to apprehend individuals responsible. If a customer receives a fraudulent disc, we ask that they immediately call 1.866.REDBOX3. The frequency of fraud is very low, especially given the number of discs we rent on a monthly basis – about 66 million discs per month on average in Q3 2013.