Central and Eastern Europe Still World Leader in Software Piracy

The Central and Eastern Europe Region (CEE) still tops the list as the world region with the highest software piracy rate – 64 percent, unchanged from 2009, according to the latest Business Software Alliance (BSA) global piracy report for 2010, released this month. Latin America now shares the first place with the CEE as the piracy rate in this region increased from 63 percent in 2009 to 64 percent in 2010.

Georgia remains the country with the highest software piracy rate in the world, 93 percent, compared to 95 percent in 2009. In the CEE region, Moldova (90%) and Armenia (89%) take the second and the third place, followed by Azerbaijan (88%), Belarus (88%), Ukraine (86%) and Montenegro (79%).

Next on the list are Kazakhstan (76%), Albania (75%) and Serbia (74%), followed by Macedonia (66%), Bosnia (66%), Russia (65%), Bulgaria (65%) and Romania (64%). After them, there are Latvia (56%), Croatia (54%), Lithuania (54%), Poland (54%) and Estonia (50%). Slovenia (47%), Slovakia (42%), Hungary (41%) and the Czech Republic (36%) are at the bottom of the list with the lowest piracy rates in the CEE region.

The piracy rates dropped in Bulgaria, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Montenegro and Russia by 2 percent compared to 2009.

Software theft for personal computers reached a record commercial value of nearly USD 59 billion (EUR 42 billion) in 2010, which is nearly double compared to 2003. The report found that emerging economies account for more than one half of the global value of PC software theft, nearly USD 32 billion (EUR 23 billion), as the PC use is growing at the fastest rate in these countries.

According to the report, the majority of users do not even understand that they are illegally using software — 60 percent think that purchasing a single license for a program and installing it on multiple computers is legal at home and 47 percent think it is legal at work.

For the full BSA Global Software 2010 Piracy Study go here.

For more information, please contact Roxana Sarghi or Jelena Jankovic.

Source: Business Software Alliance (BSA) report