Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Piracy Stats Don't Add Up

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the someone-went-out-on-a-limb dept.

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."

8 of 258 comments (clear)

  1. Silly pirates... by databank · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I chuckled at the quote in the article:

          "Some industry groups were reluctant to work with researchers, because of concern about data leaking to competitors."

    All I could think of was..."Ha..ha...we have more pirates then YOU DO!"

    Seriously what kind of "data" could piracy statistics be used by the competition?

  2. There is only one number they can be sure of by aadvancedGIR · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's how much they pay politician to pass laws in their favor and losy tech firms to invent crappy DRMs, maybe that's where the 361M$ comes from.

  3. Re:Reasoning by aadvancedGIR · · Score: 3, Interesting

    In court, they do not even try to equate them, their figure is more in the line of 1 download = 100 to 1000 lost sales.

  4. Re:Industry numbers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Somebody should really do that. My estimate is that the abstinent group would buy much less music during the study and continue to do so afterwards. Music is an addiction and once you've survived the withdrawal, you realize how much crap you bought. Assuming that teenagers don't have enough money to satisfy their addiction legally, after six months without piracy they will have realized their situation and spend their money on more important things (like cellphones...).

  5. black listing pirates from purchasing cds by Jolly_Fat_Man · · Score: 1, Interesting

    This is a market that is going to disapear. It's that simple. Kids no longer want a k7 (tape), or a CD, they want an Mp3 reader. This is the iPod generation. We few that still think that the CD sales will ever get better are kiding ourselves. Think about the LP that is out of style. Only colectors buy them. If I had all the music I have on CDs my house would be filled with them. This way I save space. To see it from a legal point of view this idea of yours would be very good. On the other hand, black-listing a person would be discrimination, besides a few other things. No one can be targeted as a criminal without being found, proven and tried guilty. What you are talking about is a crime. Innocent until proven guilty. Black-listing all those tipped to be criminals is a crime against human rights. You're not the Gestapo or P.I.D.E., you are a simple salesman of goods. Your market is disapearing, change your act. Make yourself a diferent kind of salesman. Instead of selling cds, offer the listening experience in a nice confortable manner. With coffee, and cakes. CDs are a dying breed and there is nothing that can be done about it. Pirates just see farther ahead that's all.

    --
    Blind are we who do not know that we are blind. The world has been boring ever since I got here.
    1. Re:black listing pirates from purchasing cds by delinear · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If pirates didn't exist, **AA would have to invent them. Piracy is a convenient justification for **AA creating ways to control your media, definitely. If it didn't exist, they'd find a different justification. Your approach would work if sufficient numbers of people followed it (and I'm talking regular buyers, not pirates - after all pirates are already not buying, so not pirating as well wouldn't be any more of an economic burden to the **AA's). Unfortunately that's unlikely to ever happen, instead the masses will just blithely accept the gradual loss of usage rights. You might not agree with piracy, but at least it's a hot topic issue and brings this loss of rights somewhat more into the limelight.

  6. More slashdot obfucscation by mumblestheclown · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Here we are again. Another organization makes some claim relating to the damages caused by piracy. As always, the elephant in the room (that piracy is substantial and deserves attention, if only because society has collectively devleoped a bargain where creators of intellectual property are entitled to reasonable protection of their works but that protection is being circumvented in massive quantities) is ignored. Instead, smoke and mirrors are thrown up - the large number cited is 'unverifiable' as if a definitive number to sixty decimal places could be derived - or are we going to get into a stupid discussion about terms such as 'piracy' and 'theft' again? Even if the SBA estimate is high due to the use of SBA-favourable assumptions, the elephant is still there.

    Let's discuss the real issues, shall we?

    • When A pirates software X and B pays for it, the producer still loses even if A never intended to pay for it, as the perceived value of the software is less. Consider the situation where you were the only person in the world who bought the latest music CD and everybody else got the same music by pirating it. Proof of ownership? Hell no - you feel like a sucker, because, in fact, the situation has made you one.
    • As is always brought up here in slashdot in other contexts - there's no need to pirate any given piece of software, as there are free alternatives out there. so, even if you see nothing wrong with, say, creating unlicenced drugs to save lives, the fact is that in this case there simply is no analogue. even if there were no OSS, you'd be hard pressed to suggest that anybody NEEDS software.
    • Software patents may well be evil. There may well be problems in the IP regime. You may be against the idea that copyright is continuously extended. However, none of this has anything to do with the present discussion of piracy of software, most of which is typically under five years old.
    Until the slashdot crowd, collectively (and I'm not saying that all slashdotters think alike, but you'd be just throwing more smoke and mirrors if you were to not believe that there weren't some rather commonly held views here along the lines I am suggesting and that those views have widely seen to be synonymous with a general 'slashdot look on life'), is willing to face up to the real issues instead of throwing up more kneejerk smoke and mirrors, it will continue to be an intellectually dishonest sideshow.
  7. Re:Bunk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I bought a computer from Wal-Mart with Linux installed for $208 about 4 years ago. That $200 I would have paid for XP was 8 dollars less then what I paid total you insensitive clod.

    The data you are trying to use to prove a point is flawed. The average PC costs no where near $1500. Nice try though.