A meeting to discuss pirate products and illegal downloading heard complaints yesterday that the authorities were not doing enough to battle this criminal activity and people who are found guilty time and time again were being let off with just a slap on the wrist.

The meeting, hosted by the GRTU, was addressed by Grace Borg, for Visual and Sound Communications and legal adviser Dr Patrick Galea.

"The law must be enforced and those repeatedly found guilty should have their trading licence revoked," Visual and Sound said in a statement on the meeting.

It was pointed out that the shops which traded in the legal products were slowly but surely finding it harder to keep afloat and would eventually close down, adding to the already high number of unemployed people.

On illegal downloading from the internet, those present said service providers should also play their part to prevent abuse.

"There are loads of things that one may do to block these sites such as protocol and port blocking, bandwidth capping and shaping amongst other things."