New schlock-horror ‘piracy study’
p2pnet view P2P | Advertising:- ‘Piracy’ has given ‘brand protection’ firm MarkMonitor a chance to come up with some media-grabbing, schlock-horror marketing stats.
A ‘study’ it put together for the US Chamber of Commerce is supposedly about counterfeiting and ‘piracy’ in general terms.
But, big surprise, file sharing gets most of the attention.
According to the company, it’s responsible for more than a quarter of the guestimated $200 billion in lost sales. And the BBC obligingly picks it up with >>>
A study by anti-fraud firm MarkMonitor has offered a snapshot into the changing nature of online piracy.
It monitored illegal traffic levels on 43 file-sharing sites and found that they generated more than 53 billion visits per year.
The top three – RapidShare.com, Megavideo.com and Megaupload.com – generated more than 21 billion visits.
Such sites are becoming as popular as peer-to-peer methods of accessing illegal content.
The study only used a small sample of sites suggesting that the problem could be in fact much bigger.
“The numbers are staggering,” said Charlie Abrahams, vice president of MarkMonitor.
Steve Tepp, too, reckons it’s “staggering”.
Senior director of internet counterfeiting and piracy for the global intellectual property center (SDoICaPftGIPC, for short) at the US Chamber of Commerce, “We have known for a long time that rogue websites, those dedicated to piracy and counterfeiting, were flourishing at our expense” MarkMonitor has him stating, going on:
“Now we begin to see the staggering scope of this problem—more than 53 billion visits on rogue sites”, he says, declaring:
“And the MarkMonitor study is just the tip of the iceberg, identifying only a portion of the colossal amount of Internet traffic related to online counterfeiting and digital piracy. The study’s findings underscore the urgency to address this epidemic in order to protect consumers, allow the legitimate Internet marketplace to flourish, and create jobs in America.”
Gosh!
Expect to see this ‘study’ quoted ad nauseum in ‘findings’ emanating from various entertainment cartel disinformation units.
MarkMonitor - Report Sheds Light on Scale and Complexity of Online Piracy and Counterfeiting Problem, ’, January 11, 2011
BBC – ‘Piracy websites attract billions of visits’, January 11, 2011
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January 12th, 2011 at 11:49 am
I would call it shlock-horror only on the basis of their ignorance, and mathematical skills. Creatively inventing numbers to suit a purpose is disingenuous at best. However the reality is that the fantasy numbers these shills spew are actually lower than reality, and they know this. This is why they invent statistics in these reports. They cannot prove jack shit, but they know the fantasy numbers are probably closer to what is real, they just can’t back that number up.
I, personally, move close to 2-3Tb/mo in new, used, and reconditioned content, and have been for 15 years. (not so much in the beginning
) So I know, ala carte, all you can consume with your bandwidth from a massive library of content is possible. Shit, if I can do it, why cant Sony, Warner and Vivendi?
If i charged a paltry 100usd/yr for subscription service to access 10Tb on content, and I have a low membership, around 150, thats 150,000usd/yr. But I am ethical (ha ha), what’s free is free, and I do not charge anyone for anything. Membership has even been known to donate hardware, without being asked. Now THAT’S a content distribution plan, based on zero profit.
How is it, that I could build such a thing in 1996, and it still holds strong today?
Lead, Follow, or Get The Fuck Out of the Way.
stw
January 13th, 2011 at 6:18 pm
“SDoICaPftGIPC, for short”
LMAO!
January 14th, 2011 at 11:32 am
” I would call it shlock-horror only on the basis of their ignorance, and mathematical skills. Creatively inventing numbers to suit a purpose is disingenuous at best. However the reality is that the fantasy numbers these shills spew are actually lower than reality, and they know this. This is why they invent statistics in these reports. They cannot prove jack shit, but they know the fantasy numbers are probably closer to what is real, they just can’t back that number up. ”
Yes, statistics generally ‘prove’ what the entity that commissioned the statistics want to prove. Take a conclusion, create numbers that ‘prove’ the conclusion. A very common method used by many more than the entertainment industry.
It’s odd how easily we recognize the bullshit and junk science in this case, but embrace such faulty methods in other things, depending on what we want to ‘believe’.
January 15th, 2011 at 6:57 pm
I read that Rapidshare intends to sue MarkMonitor for defamation over this bogus piracy study.
Its nice to see the anti-MAFIAA side striking back for once.