Gardai yesterday raided a suspected software pirating operation in Dublin, seizing software and hardware worth several thousand pounds, writes Eoin Licken.

The raid on a private house in the Hartstown area of Blanchardstown led to the recovery of CD-Roms of pirated software along with computer components.

The operation was carried out under the 1996 Trademark Act on foot of information supplied by the Business Software Alliance which has been lobbying since last year to stamp out software piracy in Ireland. The State has one of the highest rates of pirated software usage in western Europe, estimated by the BSA to be 70 per cent. This compares to a western European average of 43 per cent for business software.

A Garda spokeswoman said nobody had been arrested in the operation but that a file was being prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions.

The software seized is believed to include copies of Adobe and Autodesk publishing packages, which retail at around £3,000 each, and copying equipment capable of duplicating CD-Roms the principal medium on which packaged software is sold.

The BSA said the raid, undertaken by gardai from Blanchardstown, was the first of its kind here. The BSA says it has already settled one piracy case involving a midlands computer dealer and further cases are pending.

The association, whose membership includes Microsoft, Novell, Adobe, Autodesk, and Symantec, also says it is working closely with the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment on the forthcoming Copyright Bill. It expects civil search powers and stiff penalties to be included in the Bill.

A Price Waterhouse report, published last month, estimated that reducing European piracy levels to the US level of 27 per cent could create more than a quarter of a million extra jobs in Europe by the year 2001.

The BSA operates a confidential telephone line (1890 510 010) to encourage people to report incidents of suspected piracy.