Software piracy rate in Serbia in 2007 - 76%, state suffered loss in amount of 72m USD

The software piracy rate in Serbia in 2007 amounted to 76%, which is the reason why the state suffered the loss worth 72m USD.

Manager for Protection of Intellectual Property of "Microsoft", Miša Ognjanović, said that, on the basis of the results of international study of analyst company IDC, the loss had come as the result of unpaid taxes.

He added that the software piracy rate in Serbia in 2007 had fallen by 2% and he pointed out that even larger decrease in that rate was expected in 2008 because tax organs had started large campaign for eradication of use of illegal software in companies.

The CEO of "Microsoft" in Serbia, Dejan Cvetković, estimated that the important thing in the fight against piracy was the fact that the judge from the Regional Court in Belgrade had sent two dealers of piracy discs to custody. Tax inspectors, as Cvetković pointed out, confiscated more than 2,000 piracy discs with games, movies and music in May.

According to the international study on piracy in 2007, which was presented by Business Software Alliance (BSA), the highest piracy rate in the countries of east Europe is registered in Montenegro – 83%.

Romania, Bulgaria, BiH and Macedonia had software piracy rate in 2007 in amount of 68%, while the rate in Croatia amounted to 54%.

In 2007, the piracy rate in the world was reduced by only 3%, to 35%, because of the growth of number of sold computers in the countries with high piracy rate - India, China and Brasil. The share of piracy software has been decreased the most in Russia - by 7%