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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."

5 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: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.

  5. 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.