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

in other news

[macadamia_harold]

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.

In other news, the sky outside appears to be a "blue" color, and when dropped, most objects behave in a "falling" manner.

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

[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!

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.

Re:Epistemologically

[indifferent children]

word has actually made it into print

Bush used this word three days ago. Granted he was trying to discuss the beliefs of Episcopalians, but technically he did use this word.

Re:For the LAST time...

[jidar]

yeah exactly! Which is why I've been downloading this same Pantera album over and over for 12 years. I figure if I can get all the copies downloaded before the pirates do then people wont be able to steal it anymore.