Three international organisations, working to protect the intellectual property rights of music, software and film industries, have donated computer equipment to Central Board of Revenues (CBR) to help it check the export of pirated optical discs from Pakistan.
The computers, scanners and printers were donated by the International Federation of Phonographic Industry (IFPI), Business Software Alliance (BSA) and Motion Picture Association (MPA).
This equipment would be installed by the CBR at Karachi, Islamabad, Lahore airports and Port Qasim to check the illegal business of the CDs, VCDs and DVDs.
The donation was a small token of appreciation for the co-operation extended by the CBR towards anti-piracy measures in Pakistan, said IFPI's Willem van Adrichem and BSA's Al-Radha in a joint press release issued here on Friday.
Adricheni and Al-Radha also provided training to 25 customs officers at Karachi Airport in regard to fight against piracy.
Meanwhile, the CBR has also constituted an anti-piracy cell at the Customs Collectorate in Rawalpindi to control the export and import of pirated and counterfeit products.
According to the IFPI's estimates, Pakistan had been exporting tens of millions of pirated CDs across the world.
Similarly, the BSA had observed that the software piracy rate in Pakistan stood at 83 percent, which was incurring a loss of 16 million dollar to the local IT industry.
The IFPI, having its Secretariat in London, is the organisation representing the international recording industry and comprises a membership of 1,500 record producers and distributors in 76 countries.
The BSA is the voice of world's leading software companies and it represents major software houses in more than 65 countries.
Similarly, the MPA is also an international organisation, which directs the world-wide anti-piracy activities from its headquarters in California, United States.
The MPA estimates that the American motion picture industry loses in excess of three billion dollars annually in potential worldwide revenue due to piracy.