Worldwide trade in pirated software hit nearly $29 billion in 2003, according a Business Software Alliance (BSA) survey announced Wednesday. That value amounted to about 60 percent of all legal global desktop software sales of $51 billion, the BSA said.
The BSA came under some criticism for its previous tallies because it couldnt clearly spell out how much of a fall-off in sales was the result of piracy and how much was due to the availability of legitimate alternative products.
The alliance changed its methodology and its research firm in the past year. The BSAs new research firm, IDC, looked at what pieces of software are on the typical computer users machine to determine a piracy figure, rather than devise a figure based on computer shipments and past buying trends.
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