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Article:
Software Piracy - Global Increase by: Robert Palmer Pirated software is on the increase and now accounts for over one third of the software installed on the world's computers and it's cost the software industry a staggering, $28bn (£12bn) last year in lost revenues. That's the startling claim of the UK based, Business Software Alliance. Their annual survey of global software piracy shows that some 36% of software applications were illegally installed and being used during 2003. The study, conducted for the first time on behalf of the BSA by global technology research firm, International Data Corporation, incorporated major software market segments, including operating systems and consumer software and local market software. They discovered that while software costing $81bn (£38bn) was installed onto computers around the world, only $51bn (£23bn) was actually purchased and installed legally. The USA and Canada who collectively are the most honest when it comes to purchasing software show a software piracy rate of 23% whilst the worst offenders are within the Eastern European countries, where piracy levels are an incredible 71%. It's difficult to draw any comparisons from previous years data as this is the first year the study has been out-sourced to an independent company and takes in a wider spectrum of software than the previous studies conducted in-house by the BSA. As well as counting the number of illegally produced software programs installed on systems, the study also includes software for where an insufficient number of site licenses have been purchased. 'Software piracy continues to be a major challenge for economies worldwide,' said Robert Holleyman, president and CEO of BSA. 'From Algeria to New Zealand, Canada to China, piracy deprives local governments of tax revenue, costs jobs throughout the technology supply chain and cripples the local, in-country software industry.' Mr Holleyman went on to say, that 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. For its analysis, IDC drew upon its worldwide data for software and hardware shipments, conducted more than '5
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