Bulgaria Tops EU Software Piracy Rate

Bulgaria has the highest software piracy rate in the EU – 65%, according to a global study for 2010 published by the Business Software Alliance.

Some USD 113 M have been lost by the software industry due to Bulgarian piracy in the past year, compared with USD 115 M in 2009.

The Balkan country is followed by its neighbors - Romania, with 64%, and Greece, with 59%. The overall percentage of illegal software deployed in the bloc for the bloc is 35%.

Central and Eastern Europe, together with Latin America, are the regions topping the global study's ranking in terms of average piracy rates with 64% for 2010.

The global piracy rate dropped by 1 point from 2009 to 42 percent — which remains the second-highest global rate in the study's history. Emerging economies now account for more than half the global value of PC software theft, USD 31.9 B, according to the study.

Half of the 116 economies studied in 2010 had piracy rates of 62 percent or higher, and two-thirds had at least one software program pirated for every one installed legally.

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