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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."

3 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.