HONG KONG'S software piracy problems remain significant despite recent crackdowns and assurances from top officials, a major US-based computer games software association says.
Douglas Lowenstein, president of the Interactive Digital Software Association (IDSA), was responding to the remark of the Commissioner of Customs and Excise, John Tsang Chun-wah, that the SAR's piracy problems were 'firmly under control'.
The association ranked Hong Kong as the fourth worst place in the world for pirated software last year, when it was estimated manufacturers lost about US$120 million (HK$931 million) in the SAR.
China was identified as the worst offender, where 95 per cent of the games market is flooded with pirated products, accounting for $1.42 billion of the total $3.2 billion US computer and video game publishers lost last year.
The IDSA is one of the copyright industry's groups in the Washington-based International Intellectual Property Alliance, which files worldwide piracy reports to the United States trade representatives every February.
Mr Lowenstein - in Hong Kong last week - said his organisation was still compiling the report for 1999.