7 million Britons are file sharing thieves!
p2pnet news view | P2P | Politics:- More than half of UK Net traffic comprises illegal content.
Is that based on corporate entertainment cartel stats?
No. But it might as well have been.
The fallacious ‘news’ comes from Britain’s Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property, a jumped up, pumped up government bureaucracy which describes itself as a “Non-Departmental Public Body with the Intellectual Property Office as its sponsor department.”
Its role, it says, “is to advise Ministers and the Intellectual Property Office Chief Executive on the development of intellectual property (IP) policy”.
But only after it’s cleared whatever it’s putting out through the corporate entertainment industry.
Now a staggering 7,000,000 — that’s seven million — people in the UK are thieving criminals “involved in illegal downloads” and are “costing the economy tens of billions of pounds,” says the the department, faithfully quoted by the BBC.
Where’ll they put them all when they’re arrested?
“Researchers” estimate over a year, these file sharing criminals, “had free access to material worth £12bn” .
Twelve billion pounds sterling? At today’s rates, that’s $Canadian 21,161,860,988.
And 97 cents.
Wonder where the ‘researchers’ got their stats?
No need to stay tuned.
BBC – Seven million ‘use illegal files’, May 28, 2009
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May 29th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Same place the Conference Board of Canada got it. The research material is provided by the United cartels States of America.
Besides, we all know that if you couldn’t go download Milli Vanilli tunes for free, we would all go out and buy it. That’s money lost
May 29th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
are there even 7 million blokes IN the UK?
18 billion chinese, 650 million canadians and over 900 million americans are file sharing, including the brits, thats over 310% of the population of the world. even unborn babies in Nigeria are file sharing !!!
the apocolypse is nigh !!
/rant
stw
May 29th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
$21 billion dollars!
That’s almost enough to buy a meeting with say… Canadian Industry Minister Tony Clement, or Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore, or Meetings with senior officials at Prime Minister’s Office, Justice, Heritage, and Industry, or Canadian Industry Parliamentary Secretary Mike Lake, or senior officials at the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Maybe you would have change left over for an apple pie.
May 29th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
@ surfer
650 million canadians? heh
33,212,696 (July 2008 estimnate)
Cheers!
May 29th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
LOL
Did you read the opening paragraph to that BS BBC article?
“Researchers found 1.3m people using one file-sharing network on one weekday and estimated that over a year they had free access to material worth £12bn.”
How many were ACTUALLY downloading warez out of that?
See this is how they make up their fictitious numbers.
Any type of P2P protocol = theft. And they put a dollar value on that of $21 billion dollars annually.
There was no mention how they determined those values. Its all fabricated hocus pocus.
May 29th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
It’s funny, I’ve seen many “assessments” that predictably conclude that P2P “piracy” costs businesses billions of dollars in lost profits (@1 download = 1 lost sale) but I’ve never seen anything that computes the positive value of piracy as both a consumer research tool and a promotional device.
For instance, most Japanese Anime was never intended for sale outside Japan, but it became so popular among internet “thieves” around the world that now Japan is making a fortune licensing and selling Anime worldwide — money that they would not be making had piracy not introduced Anime to the online (non-Japanese) world, thereby establishing a market and demand for the product — which the anime industry was happy to step in and fill, as this ready-made market obviously saved them a fortune in advertising, promotion, and marketing costs.
This situation has been repeated with many types of entertainment media, resulting in movies, TV shows, music, and more, being sold in countries where piracy alone has created an unexpected consumer demand.
Has the entertainment media industry – or any government agency they influence – ever calculated the value of this “piracy as a free marketing tool” phenomenon? Or would they prefer to deny its very existence?
May 29th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
These numbers seem to be done by same mathematical wizards who ruined world economy. 1 file sharer causes 1 million (no matter what currency) loss a day / week / month – who matters. File sharers do have this power. So they can be sued to pay even much more damages. But why the heck don’t the cartels use these numbers in their balances? They could become the most powerful global players ever! I think I have to call the Crimson Permanent Insurance. Cheers!
May 29th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
The key sentence in the BBC article being “… government advisers say. ” Government advisors? or cartel lobby groups?
May 29th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
Bingo
May 29th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
so these 7 million fish and chips eaters are simply flushing the money they allegedly don’t spent on “product” that they download simply down the toilet or how could it be they “cost” the economy that money?
I thought if you save some of your budget for something then you spent it on something else like a new car or on a holly day trip!
So should the car industry not better sue the imaginary property (IP) industry for that because of their obnoxious bribing of politicos all over the world the people are too scared to share imaginary property with each other at no cost and spend the money on real property like new cars instead?
I thought car makers are in a crisis too?
May 29th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
Regular person: 0+0=0
“Government advisors”: 7 million internet users + what if scenario’s + consultant fee’s + political funding + trips to give away + golf memberships + politician’s wives getting consultancy fee’s + travel expenses + propaganda expenses + making up lost retail sales figures + hiring the Conference Board of Canada to publish made up data and copy bullshit = $21 billion dollars annually
May 30th, 2009 at 7:53 am
Hmm 7 million. I call legal by popular vote.
Any one second the motion [if so the world has spoken]
May 30th, 2009 at 11:48 am
Yes, those figures did indeed come from the media industries themselves, who merely “estimated” them; details here:
http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2009/05/why-copycats-report-has-copycat-problem.html
May 30th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
If 7 million people regularly break the law by file sharing, is the law wrong? How about if you applied the same logic to going over 70mph (the speed limit) on the motorway?
I’m all for file sharing.. But I also see that there does have to be a certain amount of restrictions! Spain has a pretty sensible attitude as I see it!
May 31st, 2009 at 4:20 pm
“How about if you applied the same logic to going over 70mph (the speed limit) on the motorway?”
Probably not the most fitting comparison…
If half the people committed a CIVIL INFRINGEMENT (by violating copyright), it merely makes a statement about the need to examine the applicability and enforceability of copyright – and no physical harm to anyone results.
However, it half the people committed a CRIMINAL ACT (by violating the speed limit), it would significantly raise the number of accidents, resulting in a considerable amount of physical harm to others. Speeding is something that has been proven to be dangerous to yourself and society. That’s why it’s a CRIME, and why there’s a law to enforce it that will NOT be reevaluated for applicability.
June 3rd, 2009 at 5:33 am
I thought if you save some of your budget for something then you spent it on something else like a new car or on a holly day trip!