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

Reasoning

[jac89]

Of course they dont want to share how they come up with their data. They know that simply equating downloads to lost sales is not an accurate prediction.

Re:this is rather good

[91degrees]

Windows has always been competing with older versions of windows. I have a legitimate copy of Windows XP. If I buy a new machine, I'm not going to pay the extra for Vista. I'll just install XP on the new one and if I feel like being legitimate, I'll wipe the old one and install Linux on it.

No piracy. No lost sales.

Re:For the LAST time...

[WilliamSChips]

Identity infringement is NOT theft, you still have your identity!!! Calling it "identity theft" is playing right into the hands of giant corperashuns.

That's called "fraud", which isn't theft. Fraud and theft are different crimes, just as copyright infringement and theft are different crimes.

Election infringement is NOT theft, you still have your election after all!!! Calling this a "stolen" election is playing right into the hands of giant corperashuns.

That's called election fraud. That's fraud, which is not theft.

Service infringement is NOT theft, you still have your services after all!!! Calling it "theft of services" is playing right into the hands of giant corperashuns.

Fraud.

Calling those theft are just helping ruin the English language.