Software piracy cost technology companies 51.4 billion U.S. dollars around the world last year. However, China's software piracy rate has been continuously declining by 13 percent from 2003 to 2009, according to an industry report released by Business Software Alliance and International Data Corporation (IDC) Tuesday.

The global survey on software piracy, carried out in over 100 economies, has been tracked, and compared with the previous year, the global software piracy rate from rose from 41 percent to 43 percent.

The reason is that a large number of fast-growth, high-piracy countries seriously occupied the market. The United States has the lowest piracy rate at 22 percent, followed by Japan and Luxemburg. However, the U.S. software piracy rate has led to serious economic losses in the various economies of up to 84 percent. Countries such as in Georgia, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe have more than a 90 percent software piracy rate.

Sources reported that the Asia-Pacific region's software companies, government and law-enforcement agencies have been actively conducting anti-piracy education and law enforcement. Reducing software piracy rates has made significant progress in this area, but losses due to piracy are still gradually mounting. Illegal software business losses caused more than 16.5 billion U.S. dollars in damages.
                                                                                       Source: People's Daily Online