p2pnet - rss feed: Hollywood piracy stats fiction
p2p news / p2pnet: I caught this little item from the Washinton Post today quoting losses from online file sharing.
The intellectual property industry and law enforcement officials estimate U.S. companies lose as much as $250 billion per year to Internet pirates, who swap digital copies of ‘The DaVinci Code,’ Chamillionaire’s new album and the latest Grand Theft Auto video game for free.
$250 billion per year is a big number. It is also a fictional one..
Last year, the total worldwide box office revenues for the movie industry were $23 billion, of which the US generated 40% of that amount. Revenues were slightly down from the previous year, which is understandable since the movie industry had been setting box office records an unprecedented dozen or so years in a row. The record industry last year generated a total of $33.6 billion worldwide, down 2% from the previous year. That’s a total of $56.6 billion.
So how do these industries lose $250 billion per year when combined they only generated $56.6 billion last year? Even if you take these industries all time annual revenue records, $250 billion per year is almost five time more that they ever earned combined.
The answer is simple. The $250 billion figure was simply made up. Why deliver such a fictional number? Because the bigger the number, the more incendiary it is. The more incendiary the number the more press it generates. In this case the Washington Post, a heralded paper if there ever was one, printed the number as if it were a fact.
While we are at it why not print that 5,000 lives are lost each year to file sharing? How about file sharing leads to drug use or terrorist activity? Wait, the Department of Justice already used the one on terrorist activity.
To accurately quote losses you need to isolate all of the potential causes, something that at times can be very difficult. For example, how can you truly measure the effects of bad PR acurately? If CD sales drop worldwide 2%, can you honestly say none of that loss came from sources other than file sharing? Even if you could prove it was all file sharing, 2% of $33.6 billion is still only $660 million. Throw in the 7.9% movie industry drop and you have another 1.8 billion for a total of almost $2.5 billion. But to quote five times these industries combined total worth? That’s silly.
The software industry did earn $189 billion last year, setting another record? Maybe they are throwing that figure in just for good measure? Even if they are, so what? Adding up total industry revenue and saying that is how much you lost is simply faulty judgement. Ask anyone on Wall Street.
And you can’t blame this all on the media lobbies. Their job is spin, spin that gets attention and spin motivates action in a direction that suits them. The Washington Post knows this. The paper should have done its homework.
One more note, I originally titled this article "File Sharing Takes 5000 Lives Every Year", then decided not to. I was concerned someone might actually reprint it as a fact.
Rich Menta - MP3NewsWire
Digg this story.
June 16th, 2006 at 7:44 pm
If you share files you support and most likely ARE a terrorist pedophile.
June 16th, 2006 at 11:05 pm
n/t
June 17th, 2006 at 4:48 am
Through a careful study by a joint venture of J.D Power & Associates, Catalina Marketing, Choicepoint, BBD&O, and Doubleclick, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Manure Management Division, the Census Bureau, and NORAD, file-sharing has been shown to be the leading cause of:
Yellow Waxy Build-up.
The Heartbreak of Psoriasis
Ring Around the Collar
Cat Box Odor
“Irregularity”
Black Heel Marks
Bedwetting
Loose Dentures
Forest Fires
Problem Perspiration
Spilled Milk
Tension Headaches
Diaper Rash &
Erectile Dysfunction.
Not only that, but the report adds, “It’s bad for you.”, “What would the neighbors think if they found out”, and “You’re getting coal in your Christmas Stocking this year.”
When asked for comment, representatives of the RIAA, MPAA, and BSA responded, “Yes, that sounds about right.” Officials at Sweden’s Ministry of Justice could not be reached for comment as they were all attending remedial classes covering the differences between Swedish versus US intellectual property law and which set of laws apply in Sweden.
–TG
June 17th, 2006 at 6:34 am
When is a government around the world going to have the courage to undertake an open review of these piracy statistics? Make the entertainment industry expose their statistics and the methodology they use…..then let the squirming begin
June 17th, 2006 at 8:06 am
um it says us companies…not hollywood
June 17th, 2006 at 10:35 am
There is also a canadian news item, a couple or a few years old, where the CDN courts tossed out the canadian-riaa with the judge telling them to go away (paraphrased) with their made up over-inflated riaa & BSA figures.
It can probably still be googled…
June 17th, 2006 at 12:05 pm
“um it says us companies…not hollywood”
ok, i’ll bite ….
Please, itemize these losses for us.
What companies.
How much.
Show us that they’re not made up figures.
June 17th, 2006 at 5:22 pm
yes, ford has a lot of issues with piracy of it’s products….. oh wait, they actually sell a physical product, not lease entertainment.
June 17th, 2006 at 7:00 pm
Your right, it does say US companies, and since you’ve pointed that out, I’d like to point out this:
1. Other than the movie, music, and software companies, who is bitching about “piracy”? No One. That’s why it says “intellectual property industry” before it says US companies.
2. Not all of the companies the the**aa’s represent are US companies. Therefore if you narrow it down to JUST the US companies, the numbers are even MORE inflated than the article suggests.
June 18th, 2006 at 10:03 am
Hint to the Swedish Ministry of Justice: The laws that apply in Sweden are the ones that are written in Swedish. Hope that helps……
June 18th, 2006 at 10:17 am
If you throw the BSA’s, well, uh, BS into the stats, it would become even more inflated. For every Madonna CD that gets allegedly pirated, the RIAA might figure a loss of $12.99. The BSA would figure for every copy of Adobe Creative Suite Pro that gets allegedly pirated (that’s approximately the same downloading and copying effort as the Madonna CD on the part of the alleged pirate) that’s a $1299.00 loss. Perhaps 10% of those who end up with Madonna would have actually purchased the CD, while perhaps .01% of those who got Adobe CS would have actually shelled out the big bucks for it.
The software side of the IP industry has a different view of so-called ‘piracy’ than the entertainment side. Bill Gates summed it up when he said, “If they are going to pirate software, I’d much rather they pirate ours.”
They really are not concerned about a single user installing a non-legit copy of whatever on their home computer. They would be far more concerned if a Fortune 100 decided to incorporate under-counted licensing as a cost reduction measure.