The commercial value of unlicensed software installed on personal computers in Romania reached 195 million dollars in 2010, corresponding to a piracy rate of 64 percent, according to a global study of Business Software Alliance (BSA) for 2010, which evaluates the software piracy state throughout the world.

In 2009, the losses caused by the PC application piracy were of 183 million dollars in Romania, Mediafax informed.

Compared with the previous year, the piracy rate in Romania has decreased by one percentage point, from 65 percent.

Compared with 2006, the piracy rate in Romania has decreased by five percentage points.

On a global level, the commercial value of the pirated software applications mounted by 14 percent last year, reaching a record of 58.8 billion dollars.

Although it shows that globally users are aware of the licensed software value in contrast with the pirated one, being recognized as safe and reliable, the study has emphasized that many users do not know to what extent frequent methods of software acquisition, as buying only one licensed software for several computers or downloading one software from a peer-to-peer network, are legal or illicit, Agerpres informs.

The highest piracy rates were recorded in Georgia last year (93 percent), Zimbabwe (91 percent), Bangladesh and Moldova (both by 90 percent), and the lowest were in USA, Japan, Luxembourg (20 percent each one), followed by New Zeeland (22 percent) and Australia (24 percent).

On a regional level, the highest piracy rate of 64 percent was registered last year in Central and Eastern Europe, where it remained on a level similar to the previous year, and also in Latin America, where it increased by one percentage point.

The study for 2010 is the eighth global survey on software piracy, conducted by BSA in partnership with IDC, a leader in marketing research and IT industry forecast.

The methodology that it has been used includes 182 types of data measured for 116 countries and regions all over the world.

Moreover, this year’s study includes an opinion survey among PC users, focusing on social attitudes and behaviour concerning the software piracy and conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs.

To conduct this year’s survey BSA has worked with Ipsos Public Affairs to question over 15 000 companies and individual computer users.

The questionnaires were applied online or by direct interview to 32 markets that are globally representative in terms of IT development level, geographical position and cultural diversity.

Business Software Alliance is a non-profit organization created to promote the interests of software industry and hardware industry partners.

Translated by: Cătălina Virvescu

MA Student, MTTLC, Bucharest University