Romania in the Top of Piracy

31 Aug 2004 • 00:00

ECONOMICS - August 31 2004

The Romanian piracy rate is one of the highest in the world, our country being on the third place in Eastern Europe. According to a study, Romanian loses every year 49 million U.S. dollars due to "dirty" commercializing and software installing.

By IOHANNA ONACA

The software piracy has, in Romania, a 73% rate, which puts our country among the first three states in Eastern Europe concerning the illegal software installing, according to a Business Software Alliance (BSA) and IDC study, quoted by EurActiv. Among the "remarkable" countries from the illegal software point of view one can see countries form the Independent States Community (ISC), with a rate of 91%, Ukraine (91%) and Russia (87%). In the same time, Romania is in the world hierarchy of the countries having a high piracy rate, hierarchy led by China and Vietnam (92%), Indonesia, with 88%, Pakistan (83%) and Thailand (80%).

LOSSES. According to the study, last year, at world level, software packages for PCs have been installed in the commercial way, and they had a value of 50 billion U.S. dollars. In the same time, illegal software installations reached 30 billion euros, at global level. For each 2 U.S. dollars obtained from illegal software, one adds another "dirty" software dollar, says the study. At the last year level, the pirating rate has been 36%, the value of the losses reaching this way 28.7 billion euros. The illegally installed software means 49 million U.S. dollars losses for Romania, according to the study.

TOP. The results of the research show that the region with the highest illegal software rate is Eastern Europe, with a piracy rate of 71%, followed by the Latin America (63%), the Middle East and Africa (56%) and the Asiatic region. At the other end, the countries less affected by the illegalities in the IT area are the ones in Western Europe (36%) and USA/Canada (23%). According to BSA, the value of the pirated software in 2003 reaches 9.7 billion dollars (approximately 8 billion euros) for the European Union.

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CAUSES

The appearance of new users from the newly formed markets as well as the increase of the accessibility to the pirated software, especially with the help of the Internet, led to the increase of the software piracy rate. On-line piracy is favored by the increase of the data transfer speed, which allows the users to download from the Internet large dimension files in short periods. The international Organizations try to lower the phenomenonâs amplitude by establishing new tougher laws in the copywriting area and by the appearance of some educational strategies.

MEASURES

More than 37% of the EU software is pirated. They ask the member states to establish highly expensive punishments in the moment of materializing the EU directive regarding the intellectual property rights. Beth Scott, vice president of BSA, says the losses affect a large community, including the salespersons, the suppliers and the support services. Scott believes BSA should establish high penalties in order to discourage piracy.