According to the Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft, Canadians are not only software pirates, we’re significantly better at it (maybe ‘worse at it’ is a better way of putting it) than our neighbours to the south.
The recently released results of CAAST’s annual global software piracy study revealed that Canada’s software piracy rate is 35 per cent, 13 percentage points greater than the United States’ piracy rate of 22 per cent and one percentage point lower than the global piracy rate of 36 per cent. This indicates that about one third of all software applications in Canada were pirated.
The study, conducted by research firm International Data Corp., indicates that piracy is having a significant impact on Canada, costing the economy $990 million in lost retail sales of software. This year, major software market segments – including operating systems, consumer and local-language software – were incorporated into the study.
Globally, software piracy resulted in a loss of $39 billion in 2003. The study found that while $107 billion dollars in software was installed on computers worldwide last year, only $68 billion was paid for.