Apparently in USA it is, like the rest of Central and Eastern Europe:) Anyway - in my country 10 years ago everybody was buying computers for their kids, it was sth like 1000$ then, and it was 2-3 months of earnings for average family. Software was pirated, almost by everybody. It was priced for companies, not for normal people, because everybody assumed it will be only bought by companies who need it, private people would pirate it, and they did. Earnings are up today, but kids are used to pirating things. Still, when game is sold with reasonable price (I would say 5-10$) it isn't pirated by normal people, only jerks who won't buy anything no matter what. I would say in my region people crossed the line between "piracy is neccesity" to "piracy is easy" in the last 10 years. Of course mind set of computerized generation (30 years and younger) is here to stay, so it will take long time before piracy will stop.

Heh, I moved to Poland last year and was surprised at how it's not only the computer experts who pass around pirated stuff - basically if you have a computer, you'll have pirated stuff on it. You've given me a good explanation for why it's so widespread :)

It is Second World, pretty much by definition:

* First world: countries aligned with the USA during the cold war;

* Second world: countries aligned with former Soviet Union;

* Third world: nonaligned nations.