Why selling pirated foreign DVDs is not illegal but selling a pirated Mauritian Sega is illegal

MASA's (The Mauritius Society of Authors) role is to protect the rights of creators of artistic works and ensure that they are compensated when their works are used for commercial purposes.
In sum, the role of the MASA is like a reliable partner in the promotion and protection of the artist.


It applies only to works registered in Mauritius. Every sega artist, every book author and so on who have registered their work at MASA are under the protection of the Copyright Act 1997. This is why you cannot deal with pirated Mauritian stuff. But you already knew about this.

What about imported films? Those which are sold at 3 for Rs 100. I was puzzled by this. I went to Caserne Central some years ago and discussed with the legal IT department. They gave me this answer: "if the product does not have a registered representative in Mauritius, we cannot take any action."

Does Warner Bros have a representative in Mauritius? No. Does 20th Century Fox have? No. That's why their films are being sold on Melody DVDs down the street.

Microsoft has seen a potential of profits in Mauritius and has registered its products. Remember the time when even the system administrators installed pirated Windows 98 on our machines? This time is gone! Shops are now obliged to sell original products of Microsoft. You will notice that to install Windows on a machine you just need to click "next>accept>ok". All the jargon has disappeared only to make end users aware that they can buy the product themselves instead of going to a system administrator.

But whilst Microsoft continues to tir lavie ek so ban prix, street hawkers continue to perdi zot lavie...

 

Comments

  1. ACtually films in theatres are played 3 months after their issue in Europe/America... Better downloading if you don't wanna get spoiled!

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