By Kris Graft
Western Europe is "rife" with online game piracy, said U.S.-based videogame industry trade group the Entertainment Software Association on Tuesday.
The ESA's research into game piracy is part of the "Special 301 Report" filed this week with the U.S. Trade Representative.
The group called for "better mechanisms to protect and enforce intellectual property rights in the networked digital environment."
Italy led the countries with the highest share of illegal downloads with 17 percent, according to the studies conducted in December 2008. Spain had 15.1 percent, followed by France with 7.9 percent, Germany with 6.9 percent and Poland with 6.1 percent.
Heaviest downloading countries per capita were Israel, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Poland.
ESA said in a statement that Western Europe is "home to some of the world’s most active countries engaged in online game piracy."
The Special 301 Report also found "alarmingly high volumes of illegal game downloads" on two peer-to-peer networks, BitTorrent and eDonkey.
ESA president Michael Gallagher had strong words against piracy practitioners: “Piracy is the single greatest threat to the innovation, artistic commitment and technological advancements enjoyed by millions of consumers worldwide.
“Piracy is a job killer that the world economy cannot afford in these difficult economic times. Countries that skirt obligations to combat piracy need to understand the unacceptable damage they are facilitating —and those countries that invest in protecting intellectual property rights and ensure that piracy is not tolerated at any level should be lauded.”
While the ESA's study highlighted issues in online piracy, physical disc piracy and the distribution of accompanying copy protection-circumvention devices remains a problem, according to the group.
The group released additional statistics regarding piracy:
*
* Users across 223 separate countries, territories and colonies downloaded illegal copies of games. Downloads of the two most popular titles were estimated to have been made across 219 countries, territories and colonies.
* During December 2008, based on a study of only thirteen titles, users downloaded 6,429,279 illegal copies of these titles. The total number of completed downloads made of the two most popular titles during this one-month period was 4,787,441.
* Heaviest downloading countries per capita were Israel, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Poland.
* Leading ISPs – During this period, resources provided by
1. Telecom Italia (Italy) were implicated in 11.6% of completed downloads, followed by
2. Telefonica de Espana (Spain) (7.8%)
3. France Telecom (France) (3.9%)
4. Polish Telecom (Poland) (3.6%)
5. Deutsche Telecom AG (Germany) (2.6%)
6. IUnet (Italy) (2.1%)
7. Neuf Cegetel (France ) (1.6%)
8. Jazz Telecom S.A. (Spain) (1.57%)
9. Free SAS (France) (1.56%)
10. Uni2 (Spain) (1.53%)
