Numbers Behind the War on Piracy Could Be Completely Bogus

[wraggster]

Ars Technica did an in-depth investigation into the numbers behind the war against piracy and found that Congress might as well be telling people counterfeit goods cost the economy eleventy billion zillion, for all the truth behind its figures. The oft invoked $250 billion and 750,000 jobs lost because of intellectual property theft have been repeated for over a decade, with virtually no research to back it up.

It's not just industry groups like the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition that's quoting them either. Everyone from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the Patent and Trademark Office to the FBI will repeat the same numbers back at you, pointing evasively to each other when asked which body funded the extensive economic analysis needed to arrive at such figures.

Ars pointed out that, even without looking for their sources, the numbers don't make much sense. 750,000 would mean 8% of all unemployed people in the U.S. lost their jobs to counterfeiting. $250 billion is more than the combined 2005 domestic revenues of the movie, music, software and video game industries. Yet policies are made from this information every day.

http://gizmodo.com/5061450/numbers-behind-the-war-on-piracy-could-be-completely-bogus

[alanparker05]

Goverment statistics have always been massaged to suit whatever policy they're currently running... they will always give the extreme end of the possible numbers and with piracy they just add up how much this software would have cost if people paid for it and then just say the different industries have lost that much, and tell you how many people could have been employed for that money... and they never feel they have to justify anything they say so will keep repeating it

[agenericperson]

I liked the "eleventy billion zillion" part. That was a nice touch.

Though I've known all this from day one.

[trugamer]

What would be more interesting is to calculate how much the economy gains from piracy.

I'm not condoning it or anything but in theory if a pirate makes money that the shareholder than loses (assuming this is piracy where the pirate gains something) the pirate is much more likely (as he has less money) than the shareholder to put that money back into the economy.

It probably isn't that much as most people expect pirated stuff for free on the internet now.