>> Study: 88% Of Software Is Pirated
By Alla Startseva
Staff Writer
More than 88 percent of all software produced in Russia last year was pirated, resulting
in a loss to the gross domestic product of more than $730 million, the British-based
Datamonitor research agency said in a report released Monday.
Datamonitor analyzed and forecast both the direct and indirect impact of the software
industry on the economies of 10 countries from 1999 to the end of 2004. The legitimate
software industry in Eastern Europe was worth $1.4 billion last year and is expected to
grow to $2.3 billion in 2004, according to the report, titled, "The Impact of the Software
Sector on the Economies of Eastern Europe."
Poland is the largest software market in Eastern Europe, followed by the Czech
Republic, Hungary, Russia, Slovakia, Croatia, Slovenia, Romania, Ukraine and Bulgaria,
the report said. While the software market in Poland was worth about $387 million last
year, it was only $191 million in Russia, whose piracy rate was second only to Ukraine's
89 percent.
The average piracy rate in Eastern Europe is 63 percent, compared with 34 percent in
Western Europe, Datamonitor concluded.
Despite the global economic slowdown, software remains one of the fastest-growing
industries in Eastern Europe and a rising contributor to national economies. The
degree to which Eastern Europe benefits from the software sector, however, will
strongly depend upon the piracy rate.
"Software piracy translates to a massive loss of taxable revenue, foreign investment
and GDP growth to Eastern Europe and is a constant destabilizing factor to the
economic welfare of the region," said Simon Witts, vice president of Microsoft in
Europe, the Middle East and Africa.<<
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