According to a recently released report by the Business Software Alliance, worldwide software piracy rose from 38% to 41% in 2008 (meaning that 41% of all software in use is pirated).

This is the second year in a row that software piracy has increased.

Although some progress in combating global software piracy has been made, those gains were negated by a large increase in the number of PCs in high-piracy countries such as China and India.

The scale of the software piracy problem is evident when the total monetary value of unlicensed software is examined.  In 2008, the global software market accounted for approximately $88 billion in revenue, compared with $50.2 billion in losses due to piracy.

Although the United States has the world’s lowest rate of software piracy, it accounts for the largest losses in terms of dollar amount, $9.1 billion, because it is the world’s largest software market.

According to the study:

• The lowest-piracy countries are the United States, Japan, New Zealand, and Luxembourg, all near 20%.
• The highest-piracy countries are Armenia, Bangladesh, Georgia, and Zimbabwe, all over 90%.
• The lowest regions are North America (21%) and the European Union (35%).
• The highest-piracy regions are Central/Eastern Europe (67%) and Latin America (65%).

The BSA study also found that software piracy’s negative impact reaches far beyond the software industry as it has been shown to lower revenues and eliminate  jobs for local IT providers, increase cyber crime and reduce tax revenues.

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