Wednesday, May 13, 2009

An All Time Low

Software piracy in Singapore has dropped to an all time low of 36 per cent, reports the Business Times. This is a significant milestone in Singapore’s anti-piracy efforts, the last being Singapore's removal from the United States Trade Representative Office’s Special 301 Watch List in 2001.

However, there is much room for improvement. Singapore is bested by countries in the Asia-Pacific region such as Australia, New Zealand and Japan which have software piracy rates of 26, 22 and 21 per cent respectively. Still, the staggering dollar losses continue to rise; from US$159 million in 2007 to US$163 million in 2008 (Singapore) and from US$14 billion in 2007 to US$15 billion in 2008 (Asia Pacific).

Globally, piracy has risen from 38 per cent to 41 per cent, despite decreases in 57 of the 110 countries surveyed.

Please note that the above references to software piracy pertain to personal computer software. I wonder what the figures would be like taking into account all other platforms such as Playstation and Xbox. If anyone out there has these statistics, please send them our way.

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