7 million Brits are file sharing criminals !?
p2pnet news view Politics | Freedom | P2P:- Why is everyone so surprised?
The UK government and Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music’s BPI (British Phonographic Industry) have been caught red-handed and with their pants around their ankles over spurious claims that seven million Britons are illegal file sharers.
Says ISPreview »»»
The BBC Radio 4 show More or Less has revealed serious inaccuracies in the UK governments claim that 7m Brits have been involved in illegal online file sharing (P2P) activity. The show traced the research back through several government and analyst organisations until it found the real source – a privately commissioned Jupiter Research study by Mark Mulligan for the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), a music trade body.
It doesn’t take a genius to work out that the government shouldn’t be taking their “official statistics” from such obviously partisan sources. The BBC show continued on to note that the statistics themselves are also based on a few highly questionable assumptions.
No big deal. And it isn’t even news, although it’s being shouted out as though it’s some kind of amazing revelation.
Because not only the labels, but also Hollywood and the likes of the BSA, which represents Microsoft and Apple, among others, make their statistics up — or have them made up for them, rather — all the time.
It’s routine, just as it’s routine for the mainstream media to parrot the ’stats’ as though they come from credible and reliable sources, and just as it’s routine for them to then accuse ordinary families, including young children, of being hardcore, thieving criminals, based on the same numbers.
It’s no big deal.
7 million Britons are file sharing thieves!
That was a headline to p2pnet story in May which attributed the fallacious `news` to Britain`s Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property, a unit we described as “a jumped up, pumped up government bureaucracy” 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,” we said, going on »»»
Now a staggering 7,000,000 â that`s seven million â 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?
Loses of billions of pounds of revenue each year …
Could the numbers possibly have come from the same people who are using them to browbeat not only the UK government, but other governments around the world, into using taxpayer cash and resources, as well as police and law enforcement agencies, on purely corporate copyright bidniz?
Yes, those figures did indeed come from the media industries themselves, who merely `estimated` them, said Glyn Moody in a comment post to ‘7 million Britons are file sharing thieves’.
He said in a post on his open blog:
Along with death and taxes, one of the other certainties in life is the constant flow of reports from the media industries claiming that copyright infringement is causing them to loses billions of pounds of revenue each year, and that they will inevitably go to the wall if even harsher legal sanctions against infringement are not brought in (although, strangely, they have been saying this for about 10 years now, and they seem not to have gone bust yet .)
And it is strange, we said. “The big corporate movie studios and record labels have been claiming for years they`re being ‘devastated,’ a word repeatedly used by cartel extortion units such as the RIAA and MPAA, as well as various spokespersons, but somehow, some way, they grimly struggle on, continuing to report eye-popping, mind-boggling revenues all the while.”
Of course, you might expect industries to paint the situation as bleak as possible, wrote Glyn. That`s why, they spend large chunks of their considerable revenues on expensive PR companies and lobbyists to `sex` things up a bit. But there are other kinds of reports, typically sponsored by national government departments, that claim to provide more objective information about what is happening in this field.
But he wasn’t referring to spurious SABIP claims.
He was talking about Canadian law professor Michael Geist`s revelations that a Conference Board of Canada `report` accusing Canada of being the file swapping capital of the world included material ripped off from the earlier International Intellectual Property Alliance `study` produced for, and on behalf of, the major Hollywood studios, Big 4 record labels and software houses.
However, massive international online coverage on the travesty forced the board to not only yank the report, as well as two others, but also compelled CEO Annne Golden to admit it had indeed been plagiarised.
Not seven, but more than 20 million file sharing thieves
A month later, As far as I`m concerned, everything from this industry is false, until proven otherwise, said Ben Goldacre in Bad Science.
He was quoting a story in The Sun which had “UK government sources” stating, categorically and unequivocally, that 7,000,000 Britons are file sharing thieves.
More than seven million Brits use illegal downloading sites that cost the economy billions of pounds, Government advisors said today, it stated flatly. Researchers found more than a million people using a download site in ONE day and estimated that in a year they would use £120bn worth of material.
But if Hollywood is correct, even the seven million figure is a serious underestimation.
The MPAA is Hollywood’s BS mouthpiece and according to its FACT (Farcical Approaches to Copyright Transgressions, or Federation Against Copyright Theft — take your pick), no fewer than a third of Britons are file sharing pirates.
When p2pnet ran the story, the CIA World Fact Book said the UK population numbered 60,776,238 [and counting].
The statement came from FACT head of communications Eddy Leviten (right) in Stopping Digital piracy: Strategy and Tactics, a OpSecSecurity `webinar` sponsored by Fact and Warner Brothers Entertainment, Europe.
Said p2pnet, he`s, responsible for raising and maintaining awareness of antipiracy and FACT related issues with the media, and not only but also, is, responsible for creating and delivering marketing and training materials and for driving internal communications for FACT.
And, “Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney [read Hollywood] and Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG [read the Big 4] are, unbelievably, now even folding borrowed and viewed movies and music into their statistics,” said p2pnet.
That figure had, gone up dramatically, Leviten stated, declaring, We can safely say that people in the UK are engaging in piracy more, much more, than they were previously.
FACT would be, looking a lot more at streaming when we do the research for next year said Leviten, because, Certainly, the proliferation of those sites has caused us anguish.
Jupiter Research
So how did the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property arrive at the conclusion some seven million Britons are file sharing thieves?
It, “claimed it commissioned the research from a team of academics at University College London, who it transpires got the 7m figure from a paper published by Forrester Research,” says PC Pro, quoting the BBC.
“The More or Less team hunted down the relevant Forrester paper, but could find no mention of the 7m figure, so they contacted the report’s author Mark Mulligan,” says the story, adding »»»
Mulligan claimed the figure actually came from a report he wrote about music industry losses for Forrester subsidiary Jupiter Research.
That report was privately commissioned by none other than the music trade body, the BPI.
And none of it would be worth a damn were it not for the indisputable fact the lamescream media reliably repeat everything emanating from the entertainment cartels just as though it’s golden, instead of deep brown.
So what else is new?
Jon Newton – p2pnet
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
ISPreview – 7 Million Illegal UK Broadband File Sharers Claim Found Misleading, September 5, 2009
all the time – BSA endorses three strikes plan, September 3, 2009
fallacious `news` – 7 million Britons are file sharing thieves!, May 29, 2009
BBC Seven million `use illegal files`, May 28, 2009
yank the report – Conference Board yanks `piracy` reports, May 28, 2009
Bad Science – Home taping didn`t kill music, June 6, 2009
The Sun – Downloading costs ‘billions’, May 29, 2009
file sharing pirates – FACT: a third of all Britons are online pirates, November 14, 2008
PC Pro – How UK Government spun 136 people into 7m illegal file sharers, September 4, 2009
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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 â that`s seven million â 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.
September 5th, 2009 at 11:12 am
If there is really 7 million people doing it in the UK, the logical thing to do is never make it criminal or punished period.
Bought and paid for politicians are incredibly ignorant of the real situation.
September 5th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
It is like the weapon of mass destruction lies from the Bush administration followed by the tortures which is war crime.
Similarly the lie from the entertainment industry and the legal follow up harassment are crimes.
In both cases the governmental and corporate criminals will have to pay for that dearly as nobody never go away with anything.
This is an illusion of those who think that they can.