Only two-thirds of Chinese steal software now

China Internet Lab has released its "China Software Piracy Rate Survey 2007" in Beijing.

The survey said that the overall rate at which Chinese filch copies of commercial software dropped from 63 percent in the previous year to 56 percent in 2007.

It reported that individual users illegally copied 69 percent of their software in 2007, down from 78 percent in 2006. Use of illegally copied software in organisations decreased from 39 percent to 35 percent over the year.

Chinese government departments and state-run enterprises reportedly responded to official promotion of legitimately licenced software by reducing their use of unauthorised software copies to 39 percent from 68 percent previously.

Apparently desperate to somehow put a positive spin on the survey findings in the year of the Beijing Summer Olympics, Chinese media headlined the survey result that the reported software "piracy" rate, based upon market value, within the Chinese software industry declined to 20 per cent from its prior level of 24 percent.

Maybe next year China will get its overall software "piracy" rate under 50 percent.

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