p2pnet - rss feed: Cartel bullshit defeats truth
p2pnet.net News:- p2pnet often points out that it’s de rigueur for the lamescream media to quote entertainment and software industry statistics just as though they’re reliable data from reputable sources.
However, the numbers bear about as much relationship to reality as cartel claims that members care about their customers, and from time to time, the lies are forcefully thrust back by various authorities, among them Britain’s The Economist in BSA or just BS, referring to Business Software Alliance (BSA) bullshit.
But it doesn’t matter because the major movie, music and software corporations are hard-core supporters of the dripping tap propaganda technique employed so successfully on Hitler’s behalf by Dr Joseph Goebells during World War Two.
It works like this: if you say something often enough, it eventually becomes accepted as fact, even if it’s an obvious and outright lie, and this is especially so if you control most, if not all, media outlets.
“Last week, we noted that a think tank, backed by the MPAA, had put out a fairly ridiculous report on how piracy was actually ‘costing’ the industry much more due to the ‘ripple effect’ throughout the economy,” says Techdirt’s Mike, going on:
“Specifically, the report claimed that the cost was $20.5 billion - much higher than any previous study. Of course, the think tank just happened to ignore the full ‘ripple effect’ and only focused on its impact directly in the movie industry, rather than the other aspects of the economy, such as the fact that people would spend the money elsewhere, or perhaps on other things like better consumer electronics to watch movies.”
That doesn’t make it legal, says the post, “but the overall economic impact was greatly exaggerated by double, triple and quadruple counting costs.
“Earlier this week, Tim Lee ripped apart the study, explaining how the think tank seemed to get the basic math wrong in explaining the impact. However, in a separate news story about some random patents up for auction that cover a system for catching people in theaters with video cameras, the article tosses out the $20.5 billion number as if it were fact, as a way to justify why such patents might be considered valuable. Whether or not the patents have any value is a totally different discussion, but to have such stats reported as fact without any note of the controversy over how they were derived shows why it’s so difficult to have a serious economic discussion on these issues.”
Also See:
(BSA) bullshit - Canadian software pirates, May 24, 2006
Techdirt - And Just Like That, Bogus Piracy Stats Become Fact, October 4, 2006
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October 6th, 2006 at 5:20 pm
Too bad there’s so little of it these days.
October 6th, 2006 at 5:37 pm
“It works like this: if you say something often enough, it eventually becomes accepted as fact, even if it’s an obvious and outright lie, and this is especially so if you control most, if not all, media outlets.”
whats the point of stories like this then?
October 6th, 2006 at 6:24 pm
to never give up on the truth, even if it seems hopeless.
It’s the difference between men and sheep.
October 6th, 2006 at 7:05 pm
… eventually, history scrapes away the bullshit. It can take a while, but it always happens.
Or another way of looking at it might be: What goes around, comes around.
Cheers!