Value of pirated software nearly $59b: study

The commercial value of pirated software increased 14 percent last year to nearly $59 billion, with emerging economies accounting for over half the total, according to a study published Thursday.
Businesses and consumers around the world bought $95 billion worth of legal personal computer (PC) software in 2010, according to the Business Software Alliance (BSA), but they installed another $58.8 billion in pirated software.
"This means that for every dollar spent on legitimate software in 2010, an additional 63 cents worth of unlicensed software also made its way into the market," the BSA said.
At $31.9 billion, emerging economies accounted for over half the commercial value of pirated software last year, the BSA said in its eighth Global Software Piracy Study.
While PC shipments to emerging economies accounted for half the world's total last year, the value of paid software licenses in those economies accounted for less than 20 percent of the world total, the study said.
While the value of pirated software rose, the global piracy rate for PC software dropped by a single percentage point in 2010 to 42 percent, the study found.