Pirated Software Overrun in Asia.　Manufacturers lost 8 Billion U.S. Dollars Last Year. Japan, Singapore and Taiwan, the Top Three Countries with Lowest Piracy Rate.

Business Software Alliance (BSA) revealed an investigation report on the 18^th, a large amount of population in Asia uses pirated software, and as a result, the manufacturers lost around 8 billion U. S. Dollars last year.  The amount has increased by 500 million U. S. Dollars than 2003.  Vietnam, China and Indonesia are among the five countries with the worst piracy rate.  However, all in all, the global computer software piracy rate has lowered to 35% in 2004, slightly less than the 36% in 2003.  Nonetheless, the total amount of illegal software rose from 28.8 billion dollars to 32.7 billion dollars.

 

The software piracy rate in Taiwan has maintained on 43% for three consecutive years and is the countries with third lowest software piracy rate.  Singapore comes in second with 42% piracy rate, and Japan continues to remain first with the 28% piracy rate.  China dropped two percents from 92%, and its software piracy rate in 2004 is 90%.

 

This is the second year that BSA has assigned International Data Corporation (IDC) to conduct a research on software piracy rate.  The result of the research indicates, software piracy is still a serious challenge.  Although piracy rate in 37 countries in the world has lowered, there are still 34 countries have risen piracy rates, and 18 countries stay unchanged in their software piracy rates.  Among the 93 countries and secondary areas in BSA’s research, over half of the researched countries have more than 60% piracy rates, and 24 of them have piracy rates exceeding 75%.

Only one-third of the researched countries have piracy rates lower than 50%.  In the research, it is pointed out, “What is notable is that several countries that were once with soaring piracy rates, e.g. Taiwan, Portugal, Porto Rico and South Africa have been removed from the list of high piracy rate countries.”

 

Taiwan has also suffered from an economic loss of 161 million U. S. dollars resulted from piracy.  The amount is 22 million more than the last year.  If compared to the average piracy rate, 53% in entire Asia, Taiwan is lower by 10 %.  However, there is still a gap when compared to the 35% global average piracy rate.  (2005.5)

CYJ/CHT