Three business software pirates who pleaded guilty to offences under the International Property Act were yesterday fined Rs. 450,000 and handed a sentence of six months imprisonment suspended for five years by the Additional Magistrate, Mount Lavinia Ms Darshika Wimalasiri.

The case filed by the Colombo Crime Division marked the beginning of greater focus and crackdown on business software piracy and under licensing in Sri Lanka officials said.

Police who were assisted by Business Software Alliance seized 412 illegal software CD’s from three outlets, Advance Digital Zone, Marriot CD Land and Star Shop. These targets are primarily dealing in illegal computer software containing trademarks and copyright owned by business software companies such as Adobe, Autodesk, Corel, Microsoft, Symantec and McAfee, all members of the BSA.

Most of the suspected pirated software found, involved 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).

The search warrants were issued by Additional Magistrate of Mount Lavinia Ms. Darshika Wimalasiri, while the raids were conducted by A.S.P Nuwan Vedasinghe and S.I Shantha Vithana under the supervision of the Director of the Colombo Crime Division S.S.P Anura Senanayake.-(SF)