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The Ministry of the Interior and the Police of the Czech Republic United Against Software Piracy
This year the Ministry of the Interior and the Police of the Czech Republic have a joint stand at the Invex trade fair. As Minister of the Interior Vßclav Grulich said at yesterday's press conference, the participation of the Ministry and the Czech police is motivated, first and foremost, by an effort to prevent software piracy by the public. The Ministry of the Interior has drawn up a draft version of a study entitled "A Conception of the Fight Against Copywrite Criminality", the practical application of which should, according to Mr. Gurlich, help in the acceptance of the law on authorship and in approaching the standards of the European Union. While in developed countries software piracy accounts for a share of around 30 %, the figure for this country is still running at around 70 %. Police President Col. Ji°φ Kolß° stated that the Czech police investigated around 650 criminal acts in the area of software piracy last year, while the figure for this year is already almost 1,250 - though this still represents an extremely small percentage of the total committed. The Minister of the Interior sees the main problem as being an ethical one - more and more often cases of piracy are uncovered not just among individuals, but in big companies which present themselves are being most "upstanding". According to Vßclav Grulich the important thing is to get an important message across to the population. "If someone steals his neighbour's duck, then everyone sees it as theft, and any one will tell you that decent folk don't do that. No-one, however, considers the copying of software as the same kind of offence, see it rather as a piece of bravado. People must realise that decent folk just don't do that kind of thingà ".
Hana Hikelovß
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