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Pirates Carry Off $29 Billion
Thirty-six per cent of the software installed on computers worldwide in 2003 was pirated, according to a study released recently by the Business Software Alliance (BSA). This represents a loss of nearly $29 billion to the major software manufacturers who are its members.
In total, an estimated $80 billion in software was installed on computers worldwide last year, but only $51 billion was legally purchased.
The study, conducted for the first time by global technology research firm International Data Corporation (IDC), covered operating systems, consumer software and local market software. In previous years, the study was limited to business software applications, so the results give a more comprehensive picture of the problem than ever before.
IDC used worldwide data for software and hardware shipments in 86 countries, conducted more than 5,600 interviews in 15 countries, and asked its in-country analysts around the globe to evaluate local market conditions.
Piracy rates and dollar losses for each region were as follows:
| Piracy Rate % | Dollar Losses |
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| Asia/Pacific | 53 | > $7.5 billion |
| Eastern Europe | 71 | > $2.1 billion |
| Western Europe | 36 | $9.6 billion |
| Latin America | 63 | nearly $1.3 billion |
| Middle East and Africa | 56 | >$1 billion |
| North America | 23 | >$7.2 billion |
'Software piracy continues to be a major challenge for economies worldwide', said Robert Holleyman, president and CEO of BSA. 'It deprives local governments of tax revenue, costs jobs throughout the technology supply chain and cripples the local, in-country software industry'.
Holleyman said the IDC study reflects a logical evolution in BSA's decade-long effort to measure piracy in the global economy. Its scope was expanded to account more accurately for trends such as the growth of local software markets worldwide and the acceleration of Internet piracy.
The report says the total size of a software market is far more important than the piracy rate in calculating actual dollars lost. For instance, 91 percent of software installed in the Ukraine in 2003 was pirated, as compared to 30 percent in the UK, but dollar losses in the UK ($1.6 billion) were about 17 times higher than those in the Ukraine ($92.1 million) because the UK market is much bigger.
However, according to John Gantz, Chief Research Officer at IDC, high market growth regions also tend to be high piracy regions: 'for example, China, India and Russia. If the piracy rate in emerging markets - where people are rapidly integrating computers into their lives and businesses - does not drop, the worldwide piracy rate will continue to increase'.
Business Software Alliance members include Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, Avid, Bentley Systems, Borland, CNC Software/Mastercam, Internet Security Systems, Macromedia, Microsoft, Network Associates, SolidWorks, Sybase, Symantec, UGS and VERITAS Software. More information about the BSA's latest global piracy study can be found at www.bsa.org/globalstudy
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