More people are opting for licensed software, bringing down piracy levels to 65 per cent in 2009 from 68 per cent a year ago, a BSA-IDC report today said.

While the PC software piracy rate, or installations of unlicensed software on personal computers (PC), has fallen, the dollar losses caused by software piracy continued to remain in the USD 2 billion range, it said.

"About 40 per cent of the desktop PCs sold in India continue to be white boxes (assembled), but the drop in piracy levels shows that people are now opting for legal and licensed software over the pirated ones," BSA Vice-President and Regional Director, Asia-Pacific, Jeffrey Hardee told reporters over a conference call.

The report, in its seventh edition, tracks PC software piracy rates in more than 100 economies worldwide.

The IDC study found that even though piracy levels remain high, anti-piracy education and enforcement campaigns spearheaded by the software industry, governments and law enforcement agencies have made commendable progress in bringing down piracy rates.

"In India, we have made significant progress in further bringing down the piracy rates as compared to 2008. However, our annual commercial value of unlicensed software still stands at a whopping USD 2.03 billion," Keshav S Dhakad, Chair of the India BSA Committee, said.

BSA has taken up various initiatives with the state governments of Karnataka and Maharashtra, as well as with FICCI, and the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Ministry of Industry and Commerce, and Ministry of Small and Micro Enterprises, toward increasing awareness about benefits of using licensed software and protecting indigenous IT innovation opportunity.

Global PC software piracy has dropped in 54 of the 111 countries studied, but the worldwide piracy rate has risen from 41 per cent in 2008 to 43 per cent in 2009, due to exponential growth in PC software deployments in emerging economies.

The US, Japan, and Luxembourg continue to hold the lowest piracy rates of economies surveyed (20, 21, and 21 per cent, respectively), while Asia-Pacific economies with the highest piracy rates include Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Vietnam and Pakistan.

The 2009 BSA/IDC Global PC Software Piracy Study covers piracy of all software that runs on PCs, including desktops, laptops, and ultra-portables, including netbooks. This includes operating systems, systems software, such as databases and security packages, and applications software.