SOFIA - Bulgarian authorities Tuesday expressed relief that a recent clampdown on computer pirating has saved the country from again being blacklisted by the United States as a source of unlicenced music, movies and software.
"We have recently put into force some drastic measures which were taken into account" in the US Trade Representative`s annual report on intellectual property rights, the general secretary of the interior, Boiko Borissov, told AFP.
The report, released on April 29, was widely expected again to include Bulgaria in the US priority watch list of intellectual property offenders.
Instead it remained on the regular watch list, which features fellow European Union candidate country Romania, all the members of the European Union and 32 other states.
Fearing US trade sanctions, the authorities in April imposed regulations that oblige the owners of internet servers first to limit their search options to files less than three megabytes to prevent music and movie downloads.
Experts say people have quickly found ways around the new regulations.
One is to turn to Napster-like peer-to-peer programmes and download data directly from another user, instead of a server.
05/03/2005 19:07 GMT