Unesco and the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology organised the event, which brought together Police officers, Customs and Excise officials and prosecutors to share experiences.

Erongo Governor Samuel Nuuyoma opened the workshop with a plea to buyers of books, music, artworks and computer programmes to consider the consequences before supporting pirated goods.

"We as members of the public are the ones who buy these products from the street corners while ignoring the genuine ones in the shop next door, thus encouraging the pirates that there is a market out there for their products.

But the question remains - who are we hurting at the end?" he said.

Supporting counterfeit goods, Nuuyoma said, was a slap in the face of local musicians and could discourage them from composing, producing, performing and distributing music.

"We are indirectly telling [those] in the book industry to stop writing, publishing and distributing books, we are actually telling computer programmers to stop inventing new software, and if that is the case, I wonder how many of you in this room would still be able to perform your daily activities effectively without relevant computer software," he said.

Contributions to the discussion came from as far as Germany, Malawi, South Africa and Zimbabwe, and were made by representatives of organisations such as the Namibian Society of Composers and Authors of Music (Nascam), the Namibia Reproduction Rights Organisation (NAMRRO) and the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organisations (IFRRO).

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