Piracy Stats Don't Add Up

arenam writes to tell us Australian IT is reporting that a recent briefing for the Attorney-General's Department prepared by the Australian Institute of Criminology draws certain piracy statistics into question. From the article: "The draft of the institute's intellectual property crime report, sighted by The Australian shows that copyright owners 'failed to explain' how they reached financial loss statistics used in lobbying activities and court cases. Figures for 2005 from the global Business Software Association showing $361 million a year of lost sales in Australia are 'unverified and epistemologically unreliable,' the report says."

Comments

Re:this is rather good

[Valacosa]

That's not even taking into account site licences. Any computer I have ever bought on behalf of the university I worked for was purchased without an operating system. The university has an academic site licence for Windows, and students can get a legit copy for free as well. Why then would I shell out $200 for the convenience of having Windows preinstalled?

But man does that have the potential to screw up the piracy stats!