We recently reported that authorities conducted a raid on a games shop operating in Ushaka Marine World in Durban. The owner, MR Muhammed Barber, was found guilty of selling counterfeit games and was made to pay a fine of R20,000 or serve one year in prison.
The South African Federation Against Copyright Theft (SAfact) is continuing its anti-piracy drive in Natal, with three illegal operations being raided in Durban this week.
The raids collectively yielded 535 pirated films, 400 Playstation games and 282 PC games. Two of the raids were conducted on private residences and one on an informal retail outlet. Apart from actual pirated goods, SAfact also seized a number of DVD writers and four harddrives said to contain pirated content.
SAfact estimates that the products seized represents around R282,700 in potential loss to legitimate businesses. James Lennox, SAfact CEO, stated that the primary targets of these raids were the harddrives as most of theseoperations “burn to order”. SAfact also discovered a number of counterfeit Playstation controllers in the seizures.
SAfact was tipped off by a large number of complaints from consumers who had purchased games from the illegal operations. Many of the complainants in question were unhappy with the quality of the pirated products.
The raids led to a number of asset forfeitures and severe sentencing being handed to the parties involved. SAfact is expecting to perform more raids over the next few weeks.
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