Software piracy rate in Romania went down five percent in only one year, reaching 70% by late 2002, as announced by the Business Software Alliance (BSA), the association representing the software developers.
This is the first time Romania's piracy rate is lower than the Eastern European average, which currently amounts to 71%.
Still, Romania remains one of the countries where most of the software is pirated. A study conducted by the International Planning and Research Corporation (IPR) and commissioned by the BSA, ranks Romania 18th among those countries with the highest software piracy rate, behind Vietnam, China or India, for instance.
"The piracy rate is connected to the economic development of the country. We cannot possibly register 30% piracy as in the United States, but we can register less than 60% piracy," Florin Talpes, general manager of Softwin, one of the Romanian producers represented by the BSA, told Ziarul Financiar.
BSA estimates the losses incurred by the software developers in Romania in 2002 due to the widespread use of illegal software to be worth $25.5 million.
"Three applications out of four keep being illegally installed, which considerably impacts on software developers, either local or international, by discouraging research and development investments," lawyer Nicolae Burchel, BSA's legal representative for Romania said.
The piracy rate amounted to 39% worldwide at the end of 2002, causing the producers to lose more than 13 billion dollars a year. iuliana.susanu@zf.ro
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