According to US newspaper The Washington Post, Malta was not included in a list of countries that were being monitored by the United States of America’s administration in connection with the piracy of copyrighted material.

The publication did however say that piracy of copyrighted material was relatively common in Malta, with police often seizing counterfeit CDs, DVDs and video games, among other material.

The Washington Post said China, Russia, Argentina, Chile, Egypt, India, Israel, Lebanon, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine and Venezuela had been placed on a targeted “priority watch list” for failing to sufficiently protect American producers of music, films and other copyrighted material from widespread piracy, while 31 countries were placed on lower level monitoring lists, indicating that concerns about copyright violations in those nations did not warrant the highest level of scrutiny.

The countries placed on a lower-level watch list were Belarus, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Hungary, Indonesia, Italy, Jamaica, South Korea, Kuwait, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.

Being on the “priority watch list” could eventually lead to economic sanctions if the US administration decides to bring trade cases before the World Trade Organisation.

The designations occurred in a report that the administration is required to provide Congress each year, highlighting the problems American companies were facing around the world with copyright piracy which, they contended, was costing them billions of dollars in lost sales annually, added The Washington Post.