p2pnet news | Freedom:- Tom Giovanetti —- he describes himself as an, “all-around nice guy (if a bit of an over-serious dork)” —- runs the IPI (Institute for Policy Innovation), a spin outfit with a, “history of pushing what it calls a pro-market agenda with its research, including one study asking if open source has reached its limits and another similar to that under discussion here that attempts to quantify the economic impact of movie piracy,” says Ars Technica.

p2pnet was somewhat more pointed in its criticism of the study, and Giovanetti (an avowed supporter of the DMCA and digital rights management [DRM] technologies) responded angrily in a comment post in which he said, “Consider the gauntlet layed down.”

Gauntlet? heh.

“In June 2004 the Australian blogger Tim Lambert mentioned IPI as one of several think tanks writing reports critical to open source software while they seem to be funded by Microsoft,” says SourceWatch.

Giovanetti responded:

First, you accuse IPI of taking money from Microsoft, but you have no facts or proof. True, you’d LIKE us to do your homework for you, but in absence of proof, a decent journalist never makes an accusation. … Second, regarding whether we take money from Microsoft, IPI has an absolute policy of protecting our donors’ privacy.

Anyway, I followed up Giovanetti’s p2pnet gauntlet effort with Deeply flawed IPI ‘piracy’ study: Part II, and once again, the garments protecting Giovanetti’s nether regions have become severely twisted.

‘Habitual knee-jerk pressure of industry’

Tom, I’m glad you’re still in there trying to protect the best interests of the corporate communities, and it’s always a pleasure to see an intelligent, carefully reasoned comment in p2pnet.

Unfortunately, your response doesn’t qualify in either respect.

You say:

You’re just a habitual, knee-jerk basher of industry, because they won’t let you have all the content you can consume for free. You’re a freeloader, and you don’t want anybody talking about the cost of all the freeloading that you encourage.

I admit it: I’ve downloaded mp3s. And I’ll keep on downloading them. But I’m not a criminal, and I’m not a thief. None of my downloads have deprived anybody of something they used to own; no money has changed hands; and, my downloads don’t mean I’d have otherwise bought the tunes from an online retail outlet.

In fact, in most cases, none of my downloads are otherwise available on- or offline.

Nor am I a freeloader, although I freely admit to being a “basher of industry”.

And there’s nothing knee-jerk about it. My message to the cartels is a loud and clear: Start treating me fairly and as an intelligent, responsible human being, and I might think about including you in my purchases.

Until then, I’ll keep on bashing.

Louie-Louie and Peter Gunn

Thanks to the Net, I’ve collected a whole bunch of covers of Louie-Louie and the Peter Gunn theme. And the kind of music I listen to while I’m working includes tracks from Cold Mountain; Jamie Cullum; Miles Davis, the Stones; Etta James; Jimi Hendrix; Canned heat; Mose Allison; Yo-Yo Ma; and a lot of others.

Are all my mp3s downloads? Nope. Far from it. Quite a few are rips from CDs I bought because it IS possible to find good music in the CD racks, although hardly any comes from from Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal or Sony BMG.

And when I find it, I have no problem paying the asking price, whatever it may be. I have nice collection of blues and jazz, as well as a number of oldies from the likes of Steve Miller. And I bought every CD, paying anything from $5 to $25.

Earlier, I said I enjoy music from the Cold Mountain movie. I’m able to do that because I own the DVD.

Did I compile it from a download? Nope. I bought it. For $2. At a garage sale.

I’m a very ordinary person with a substantially less than ordinary income and there’s no way I’m going to fork out $23 for a flick I’m unlikely to watch more than once or twice; or the same amount for a Big 4 CD with only two or three decent tracks, if that.

I also own A Bridge Too Far; Gettysburg; March of the Penguins; Corpse Bride; Black Hawk Down; and a few others, none of which cost me more than $2.50, and none of which I’ve watched more than twice.

Corporate bilge

I couldn’t care less about listening to new releases or watching new movies just because they’re new.

Ninety percent of the corporate music released today isn’t worth a light and there’s too much good stuff around to even bother with it.

My daughter, Emma, is 11 and sadly, she’s exposed to floods of non-stop corporate bilge, just like any other kid in North America.

The cartels own or in one way or another control most on and offline print and electronic media outlets, here. This means they’re able to flood the airwaves and, increasingly, the Net with corporate gunge.

But unlike a lot of kids of her age, Emma knows there are other kinds of music available and she’s slowly acquiring the ability to discriminate. In fact, just about all of the Big 4 music I’ve heard has come from her and it gives me a lift to realise she really is learning to sort the good from the bad and the ugly.

Behind the curve instead of in front of it

Anyway, “You STILL have not demonstrated any empirical problem with the study or with its numbers,” says Giovanetti.

I’m neither a statistician nor an economist so I’ll leave empirical studies to people such as Koleman Strumpf, from the University of Kansas, School of Business, and colleague Felix Oberholzer, from Harvard University Business School.

They produced The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis which very effectively gave the lie to the assertion that files downloaded equal sales lost.

And a while ago Strumpf told me a second study, this time concentrating on the movie industry, is in the making.

Its conclusions will be extremely interesting.

Because although the major movie studios and record labels are trying to claim they’re being “devastated” - their word - by file sharers and counterfeiters, the statement, like the IPI’s so-called ’study’ which started this exchange, is no more than deeply flawed hogwash and in fact, Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney are raking in more than ever before.

Counterfeiters and duplicators, aka ‘pirates,’ are criminals who, meanwhile, deserve everything they get when they’re caught.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen as often as the cartels would like you to believe because the people charged with apprehending them are far less technically adept than the people they’re trying to catch.

One of the reason for this is: the cartels draw from a pool of people who are way behind the curve instead of far out in front of it. Their skills tend more towards hype and distortion.

Corporate enforcers include retired cops who correctly identified the movie and music industry as a cash cow and, happily laughing all the way to the bank, advise them on how to catch criminals who are light years ahead of them both in terms of technical knowledge and expertise, not to mention the fact they’re several decades younger.

On top of that, the cartels are haemorrhaging credibility at a mind-boggling rate as they continue to blame their own customers for cartel-manufactured problems.

More hogwash.

One of the principal reasons the world is in trouble is because world economies are being undermined by self-interested corporations which answer only to shareholders, and by governments which answer only to the corporations.

Says rkp in a Reader’s Write to the post Giovanetti response to:

Plain fact is, all these studies and figures the **AAs and their ilk produce are pointless (even if they were accurate and unbiased). You know why? Because Pandoras Box has been opened, the internet, and the fast means of distribution - for legit or pirate copy - is here to stay. No reports, no laws, no gnashing of teeth by the company execs is going to close that box again. It’s a losing battle for you - the days when the big cartels held everything in a virtual stranglehold are gone. In its way, the net has broken the near total monopoly of the giant ‘entertainment’ corporations, and liberated the consumer. We are now used to getting what we want, when we want, and how we want - not on the unfair and biased terms which the cartels used to dictate to us. As I said in an earlier post, instead of driving for new laws, producers and distributors should be adapting, asking how they can get a share of this huge pot of ‘lost’ revenue.

The smart move for the companies now is to work with us all, not against us - because, despite all the rhetoric, just about every p2p’er probably recognizes that the artist, companies and so on do need compensating for their work. We’re just not prepared to live with the one sided situation at the moment which quite frankly leaves everybody ripped off - artists included - and just serves to make the major companies richer.

Quick afterthought re the study itself - and Tax. Let’s say I have X amount of income to spend. Normally I’d spend we’ll say $50 of that on dvds. Only I find piracy. I can download all the dvds I like for free now.

So what do I do with that $50?

I spend it on something else.

That something else is still taxed, the money is still going back into the economy. If your losses - real or fictional - mean you are paying less tax, then that only represents your sector of the industry - that money is still in circulation elsewhere, still being taxed. Considered as a global whole, the tax revenue on consumer capital will stay the same whether those consumers are buying DVDs or music or using it as payments on a new car instead.

Linking piracy and tax loss may well be a winner with politicians, but in the real world the only difference will be just what else the consumer is buying to pay tax upon, not on the amount of taxes he is paying - after all, the consumer only has a finite income.

And, incidentally, what about all the taxes governments lose from huge companies using practices like offshoring, exploiting legal loopholes etc? Or don’t they matter because it’s good business practice for companies/ultra rich individuals to do that?

Says another Reader’s Write:

An American, for 30 dollars can buy two Latin records from Sony or a pair of shoes. In one case the money goes to Latin America and Japan and in the other to China. As a third option, the money can be used to buy American cigarettes, on gambling, on boxing, or on something of value.

Conclusion: For the American economy it is best to get some mp3 files from a friend and then, with the saved money, poison yourself with tobacco, damage your brain with boxing or ruin yourself with gambling, or wisely spend the money on something of value.

Only when spending money on something of value will the destroyed and amBUSHed economy will be helped with currently mispent on mostly junk-entertainment money.

Forget the advice from the copyright and other junk entertainment cartels.

Their knowledge of what is good for the economy or even themselves is plainly nonexistent.

Simplistic? Perhaps. But when you hack your way through the layers of flab, gab and spin, you’re left with one fact:

Money talks and bullshit doesn’t walk.

Ask Tom.

Cheers! And all the best ….

Jon Newton - p2pnet

(PS, Tom - Glad you liked the pic of yourself —– nod nod, wink wink )

.Slashdot it!

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This entry was posted on Sunday, August 26th, 2007 at 12:02 pm and is filed under Freedom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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