Under the predawn sky on June 29, 2005, federal agents armed with arrest warrants and Glock handguns banged on the door of the house at 38244 Hastings St. in Fremont, Calif. “FBI!” they shouted. Their target was a heavyset 24-year-old biker named Chirayu Patel, alleged to be a leader of the “Boozers” and a handful of other underground gangs that illegally copy and load onto the Internet blockbuster movies such as Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith and Batman Begins.

Patel’s dad answered the 6 a.m. wake-up call, FBI officials say. Ten agents swept the house, guns drawn. Patel was found in his bedroom, where he was cuffed and arrested.

In nearby San Francisco, FBI special agent Julia B. Jolie was pacing through the “op center,” a 30-foot-by-30-foot room with photos and handwritten rap sheets pinned to the walls for Patel and 25 other digital pirates who were being arrested that morning. As head of the sting, dubbed Operation Copycat, Jolie had just given the “go” order to agents in the field. Video pirates, who are often clean-shaven and hold professional jobs, certainly don’t look dangerous. But the manpower committed to the case demonstrates how seriously the feds take them. “Are these big bad mafia types? No,” Jolie says later. “But this is a huge criminal activity.”

Welcome to Hollywood’s Napster moment. If movie studios hope to dodge the fate of the music industry, whose growth was cut short in part by illegal downloading, they need to come up with a solution to illegal copying. Part of that is to develop a model for legal movie downloads over the Net. Hollywood has taken baby steps in that direction. Studios have two Web sites, Movielink.com and CinemaNow.com, that offer movies via the Net. But downloads are slow, and the movies, which cost a few dollars to rent and $20 to own, can’t be burned to a DVD.

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