Software Piracy Numbers

May 22, 2001 10:00 AM

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CNN has a story with numbers on software piracy. According to a recent study 37% of software worldwide has been pirated, making for lost revenue of about $11.75 billion. The Asian Pacific region is one of the bigger offenders, with only a few percentage of software being legal in Vietnam, China and Russia. Piracy is one of the reasons Windows XP will come with that whole product activation thing, even though that has been cracked already as well.

Software companies have tried for some time to persuade China and other nations to strengthen and enforce intellectual property laws. "There isn't a sufficient local interest protecting intellectual property," Kruger said of those countries. "But that's kind of a circular argument. Until you protect IP (intellectual property) you won't be able to create the growth of an IP industry."