Thirty-six percent of the software installed on computers worldwide is pirated, representing a loss of nearly $29 billion. These are the key findings of a global software piracy study released by the Business Software Alliance (BSA), the international association of the world’s leading software manufacturers. Conducted for the first time by global technology research firm International Data Corporation (IDC), this year’s BSA global piracy study incorporated major software market segments including operating systems, consumer software and local market software.

Software piracy continues to be a major challenge for economies worldwide. It deprives local governments of tax revenue, costs jobs throughout the technology supply chain and cripples the local in-country software industry. Not only is this, the entertainment industry is also suffering great deal due to internet piracy It's no secret that online piracy has decimated the music industry, as millions of people have stopped buying CDs and started stealing their favorite songs by downloading them from the Internet.
Downloading off the internet is what millions of consumers are now looking for entertainment, knowingly or unknowingly that such an act is theft, it has become a common practice.
Well the question is how it starts! and that is through an absolute act of theft, Someone steals a print from the editor's room or someone steals a print from the composer who's doing the music .Steals a print, makes a digital copy, and uploads it and with a single click this copy is distributed to millions of people using internet for this purpose.

Digital copies are also been bootlegged from DVDs sent to reviewers or ad agencies, or circulated among companies that do special effects, or subtitles.
The other way that pre-released movies ends up is that there are lots of screenings that happen in this industry, People go to those screenings with a digital camcorder, sit in the back, turn the camcorder on and viola. It used to take forever to download a movie, but anyone with a high-speed Internet connection can now have a full-length film in an hour or two.

And then the biggest downloading Web site out there, “Kazaa” is the largest peer-to-peer network. It's called peer-to-peer because computer users are sharing files with each other, with no middleman. All Kazaa does is provide the software to make that sharing possible. With cable net where one can access internet all day long Kazaa shows its wonders by peeping into every kind of digital file of nearly four million other Kazaa users. Be it an audio document, images, software or video. If you wanted a movie like Lord Of The Ring, all you have to do is to click on the video section, and type in a search phrase, and rest Kazaa will do by asking the people on the peer-to-peer network ‘who has got the Lord Of the Rings? ’
Within seconds, 191 computers sent an answer: "We have it." And here you go with crisp picture and sound, “Lord Of the Ring", downloaded free from Kazaa.

And this is not the end of it, this act of theft has taken up the shape of whole new industry, many people are related to this business and earning there bread in Pakistan’s biggest city of Karachi
A shabbily dressed hawker squabbles with a teenager over the price of a latest Microsoft Windows software ,and he finalizes the deal at Rs.40 nearly $0.70.This is the scene commonly found in the 12-storey Rainbow Centre in Sadder, one of the popular place known for pirated movies and software with more than 200 shops.

The Washington-based International Intellectual Property Alliance ranked Pakistan one of the world’s largest producers of pirated CDs and other optical discs for export in both 2002 and 2003.
It has been observed that the piracy of movies and music had cost the industry nearly $ 72 million in Pakistan in 2002 and $ 71 million the year before. According to Microsoft country manager Jawwad Rehman, more than 90 per cent of the software and movies sold in Pakistan are pirated.
Under such a volatile event in Pakistan, the government has taken some actions to try to keep copyright piracy in check. However, the problem of CD piracy has become alarming over the past few years, with millions of pirated discs produced in Pakistan are now showing up all over the world, including South Asia, Africa, Middle East, parts of Europe, due to which Pakistan has been declared to be on the watch-list.