well seen ekenam aththa thama. ada dailynews eketh thibba. menna news item eke. anika mehema karata pirate CD's wikunana eke nawathwanna baa ne. CD's keeyak confiscate karannada?? lankawe pura giyoth they will find around a million pirated CD which are still waiting to be sold ne. anika around 40% of them will be in pettah thama!!
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Raids on to curb software piracy
Colombo: Colombo Crime Division officers with the assistance of representatives of the Business Software Alliance (BSA) conducted raids against distributors of illegal business software in Colombo marking the beginning of greater focus and crackdown on business software piracy distribution and business software under-licensing, the BSA said.
Three outlets in a leading shopping complex in Colombo were raided and 412 illegal CDs were seized by the Police.
Most of the suspected pirated software found involved the business software commonly used for photo editing, animation rendering, web and computer-aided designing, anti-virus protection and productivity suites (word processing, spreadsheets, presentation, personal time and information management tools).
If found guilty and convicted under the Intellectual Property Act No. 36 of 2003, offenders face up to Rs. 500,000 in fines per infringement or may even be jailed up to six months.
The search warrants were issued by Mount Lavinia Additional Magistrate of Ms. Darshika Wimalasiri, while the raids were conducted by ASP Nuwan Vedasinghe and S.I Shantha Vithana under the supervision of the Director of the Colombo Crime Division SSP Anura Senanayake.
SSP Senanayake, who was on-site during the simultaneous raids, said "I strongly encourage all computer dealers and software resellers everywhere to ensure that they only sell legal and original software to avoid facing the full consequences of the law. We will continue to monitor the situation and we will be conducting continued enforcement against software pirates until piracy is wiped out.
Innocent consumers and traders simply need to be protected against this criminal trade which is costing millions in losses to the industry, as well as the government in the form of taxes. We recommend and remind all businesses to respect the law of the country by purchasing and using genuine software and avoiding dealing with vendors who sell pirated or unlicensed software.
Business owners and senior management should take a proactive role in auditing their existing computers to ensure the software is fully licensed with the necessary documentation."
Criminals behind counterfeit syndicates are considered to be organised, resourceful and willing to spend large amounts of money to develop and ship pirated goods to markets all over the world. Sadly, Sri Lanka is no longer a stranger to the issue of piracy, being ranked as the country with the sixth highest piracy rate in the world at 90%, and the second-highest in the Asia-Pacific region - bringing notoriety and unwanted global attention on the island.
In a global software piracy study conducted independently for the BSA by IDC, the information technology (IT) industry's leading global market research and forecasting firm, the high software piracy rate has resulted in US$86 million in retail revenue losses to the local Sri Lankan software economy.
-dailynews.lk