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Misleading Data Undermines Counterfeiting Claims
An anonymous reader writes "Canada has been the home to a growing debate on counterfeiting with politicians, law enforcement, and copyright lobby groups all pushing for stronger copyright and anti-counterfeiting laws. Writing in the Toronto Star, Michael Geist reports that the claims are based on fatally flawed data. The RCMP, Canada's national police force, has been claiming that counterfeiting costs Canadians $30 billion per year. When pressed on the issue, last week they admitted that the estimate was not based on any original research but rather on 'open source documents found on the Internet.'"
So... what are the chances they just browsed Wikipedia for it?
eclecti.cc
Yep.
Yawn.
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
some readers might not realize that the phrase "open source" has a number of common uses.
besides the one most slashdot readers are familiar with, another is possibly equally interesting to slashdot readers:
click here for an alternative definition.
cheers.
Is it that big a surprise that government and reporting agencies bloat numbers .... or even just lie to get their agenda covered?
It's not just Canada. It's the USA, all the countries in Europe, Asia..
Any peoples with a government body lie.
My guess is they got it from MediaDefender and their ilk. I mean, they *bragged* about "blowing smoke" and making up wild piracy numbers.
They also made sure to tell their guys when they wanted stats on some album that "we're not protecting this one, so the higher the better" (paraphrased).
Hell, they also admitted to trying to sanitize their own Wikipedia page (click the discussion tab), so if they did get bad numbers from Wikipedia, I wouldn't be surprised if MediaDefender or someone like them put them there in the first place...
As the Canadian dollar appreciates relative to the U.S. dollar, counterfeiters will make the transition from U.S. to Canadian money and Americans will save $30 billion per year. Not to mention that it's good for the Earth when counterfeiters find ways to cut down on their use of paper.
I agree with parent. Given the legal context, it's very likely that this is what the RCMP actually meant.
Canada's national police force, has been claiming that counterfeiting costs Canadians $30 billion per year.
Umm no it doesn't cost Canadians anything, they're getting all that counterfeit stuff for free, that's kinda the whole point of piracy. It might be more accurate to say that $30 billion per year worth of wealth is more evenly distributed in Canada, thanks to counterfeiting. (I'm only being partially sarcastic)
We are all just people.
So... what are the chances they just browsed Wikipedia for it?
If they are browsing Wikipedia, it's to insert their own BS into it. They pulled "articles" from "news" sites and ignored their own GAO estimates based on random sampling of real markets. In other words, they pulled it out of some industry (International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition) press release and an "estimate" by the Chief Economist for the Canadian Manufacturing and Exporters.
These estimate "pirate" product as %20 of the entire Canadian economy and that's insane. When you consider real estate, cars, domestic food product, gasoline and non branded commodities that dominate any economy, you would be lucky if %20 of goods were branded at all much less "pirated". How many fake Rolexes do these people think can be sold in a given year? Does anyone really believe that one in five dollars spent goes to something "fake"?
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
misleading data mines you!
It's just too plain complicated process to come up with a simple number and claim "that's it", even for a team of neutral experts.
And that's the ideal case (people are never neutral, especially on a topic such as this).
The reason they need this number most is they want the government to put a law that artificially "restores the balance" by splitting the loss on blank media and players, taxing those.
The flaws of this approach are visible from a mile away, even if you had the perfect data in your hands.
So bottom line: we can't obtain proper data, but we shouldn't need it in the first place.
Also, this sounds like RIAA logic in some ways. It seems like the number either assume that the people buying, for example, fake rolexes, don't know they are buying a fake, and are actually not getting the product they expect to, or it assumes that if they didn't buy the fake rolex, and the counterfeit product wasn't available, that they would have bought the real thing. For the majority of counterfeit products, people know that what they are buying isn't the real thing, and just want some cheap imitation. I know it sucks for the makers of the real things, but think about it this way, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Canada has been the home to a growing debate ...
... the individuals and organizations in favor of these shenanigans have no interest whatsoever in debating anything with anyone. They simply want their way, and they'll do pretty much whatever it takes to get it. Nobody else's perspective but their own is of any consequence to them.
From dictionary.com:
Debate: a discussion, as of a public question in an assembly, involving opposing viewpoints
There's plenty of opposing viewpoints, but really there's no "discussion" here
A couple of more appropriate words might be "rubberstamp", or perhaps "steamroller". But not debate.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I would wager that moves like "Evan Almighty" cost the industry more then piracy.
hah... totally agree, not too many "open-air markets" in Canada...
but in all seriousness, someone better stop the Ice Road Truckers for inspection! Who knows how many DVDs and CDs they could fit in those bad boys? I'm sure some **AA lawyerobbyist knows. We need him on the line stat to make up some new estimates based on this open source information I just provided
Walk with Music;
So, does anyone really believe that piracy costs Canadians about $900 per person per year?
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
So a law enforcement agency overstated the threat/street value? I'm schocked, simply schocked...
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
It just means "consider the source." If Alan Greenspan edited a financial article on Wikipedia and authenticated himself on his user page, I'd take his edit as more authoritative than if 132.147.63.12 made the same edit.
On the other hand, if anyone including the folks at 132.147.63.12 made an edit and quoted Greenspan, the quote checked out, and the edit itself was written well, I would consider it just as authoritative.
You should ALWAYS consider the sources - and the original sources if it's not one - when using other people's data.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
If you read the article, they goggled and found some material that some guy made up. Subsequently they found a power point presentation by another guy where a single bullet point on a slide sort-of correlated with what the other guy made up. Two guys can't be wrong, eh?
Sadly, I am not making this up.
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If you have to look it up like i did, I'll save you the trouble: Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
I mean, they are still riding horses, did you really expect an elaborate financial analysis on the impact of piracy from them? Jeez...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
... the RCMP announces the breakup of a massive counterfeiting operation based in Shivering Moose, Alberta.
Have gnu, will travel.
Who did the estimates of the billions lost by Google?
:-)
Wasn't the RCMP, was it?
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
Last year I lost 500000 Billion dollars to people stealing my "stuff"...By my own internal research of course...
:-)
In short, there is an old saying for this... You didnt loose what you never had...
I wish it worked the other way too.
Australian government initiative to spend $84 million to develop a content filter.
.
Does anyone really believe that one in five dollars spent goes to something "fake"?
I think they are counting lost sales based on any fake would have been a real sale. Just considering my daughters 30 gig Zen would lead to that conclusion. The Zen has 2,200 files on it (I know from making a backup). With the back-up copy also being a pirated copy, that at a dollar per song is about 5K dollars worth of pirated stuff. That counts just my daughters Zen, not my son's iPod. In the last year using those figures, they have collected together over 15% of my income for the year. I think this is the figures they are running with.
What they are failing to figure, is if all that music was paid for for each copy, is they could pocket that money. This is simply wrong. That money isn't there. At full retail with piracy eliminated the reality would be that neither kid would have any use for an iPod or Zen and they would be exposed to less music and would have bought far fewer CD's than they actualy did. With the portable music players and a large exposuere, they have become avid fans of some bands and buy CD's and go to concerts. Without the exposure, this would not have happend.
I grew up in the 1970s. Through those years, I didn't go to any concerts. The local AM station played country. In high school the next town over got a couple FM stations, one was rock. Piracy was mostly non-existant, but so was my involvement with any music industry product.
When I went into the Navy and spent time in the barracs, I was exposed to lots of neat music. I invested heavily in a very good stereo system including a linear tracking turntable and 2 cassette decks. I pirated a bunch of stuff and also bought a bunch of stuff. That was my peak music buying years. If Piracy didn't exist, I would have had little reason to get into stereo and invest in quality duplication decks in a big way. This is seldom figured in any anti-piracy study. For the new generation, the cassette decks has been replaced by PC hard drives and portable music players. The cost of duplication has gone down, the quality of copies has gone up and the media compainies still have way overpriced products.
The biggest roadblock to stopping piracy at the moment is simply overpriced product. This has not changed since I was in the Navy. I would have bought a lot more of my favorite music if it didn't cost so stinking much. I'm glad to see Nine Inch Nails make an issue of that. They are dead right.
The truth shall set you free!
There is a growing problem with counterfeits outside of IP crap. There are the brand name knock-offs of stuff like designer goods, but there is more and more counterfeiting of things like tires and automobile parts. That genuine GM part might be a sub-par knock off out of a chinese factory.
It's cool to pretend stuff like this doesn't matter, but it does.
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
$1000 is not really plausible, especially since this includes a large part of the population (small children and the elderly etc.) who do not purchase any or very little media and who do not have the capability to "pirate".
So people who give numbers on this topic should really give a range or a distribution or something, and be explicit about their assumptions.
Does anyone really believe that one in five dollars spent goes to something "fake"?
--
Fake food? Pizza, Twinkies, Mc*** ?
>>Does anyone really believe that one in five dollars spent goes to something "fake"?
Certainly once genetic code can be copyrighted, trademarked or otherwise "protected" (as it often is in the form of plant seed), you can have consumers buying fake wheat, corn, oats even copyright infringing bananas.
As the article points out, the actual figures when the US examined containers to determine counterfeit goods, was 0.02% of the goods by value.
"It's cool to pretend stuff like this doesn't matter, but it does."
It matters 0.02% of trade, so it hardly matters at all.
I wouldn't call him a Liberal: he helped a Liberal (Sarmite Bulte) to lose the last election.
What's so bad about liberals anyway ?
Last century it was communists, now liberals ?
Politics would make a lot more sense if people actually put a little thought into their choices, rather than spinning a wheel to choose who they hate this week.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I know I probably personally pirate $900 a year worth of stuff.
But if I didn't have that opportunity, would I have spent that $900 on the same material? No. What would I have spent on it? $0.
This is because movies I really like I always buy the DVD copy of anyway to add to my collection. Movies that suck, well, I download because I have nothing else to do when I am bored. If the ability to pirate this stuff was taken away I would just find something else to do with my time (and would probably lose interest in movies altogether and therefore stop buying even the DVDs I do buy!)
Hollywood really needs to take a strong look at what they are trying to accomplish because I am just one of many people who fit in this boat... There are way more ways to entertain yourself than there were 30 years ago. Television, movies, and the RIAA, who used to have a monopoly on home entertainment, now have to compete with video games and the internet, which itself is all of those mediums combined plus more. If they keep alianating their audiences, they will just leave.
Is Slashdot hiring? These guys sound perfect!!
Come on, if it's on the internet then it MUST be true!
In Canada when we say "Liberal", we are usually referring to the Liberal Party of Canada. They have been embroiled in some of the worst scandals in recent history here ("Adscam" and our infamous two billion dollar gun registry come to mind).
:)
Elsewhere the word liberal usually refers to people with particular social and idealogical leanings. Here we are referring to a particular group of corrupt dirtbags.
I have no idea of Mr. Geist's political affiliations, and it doesn't matter to me. He's done a lot of good things.
I've got a fake Rolex that came from overseas. I know it's fake, but it still looks nicer, and the kinetic-motion part actually keeps a better charge than my previous authentic watch (which I think was a cardinal). I wouldn't take this one in the pool with me, but as a watch it works and looks better than my previous watches, despite costing less.
You know, I'm Canadian (though not Albertan) and I still had to double-check that such a town didn't exist. We do get some weirdly named ones up here :-)
Reminds me of an old joke.
Two Americans - a man and his wife - become lost while driving around in Canada during their holidays. After wandering aimlessly for awhile, the man finally takes the advice of his wife and stop to ask for directions. They pull into a small gas station, and the man asks the burly attendant therein if he could tell them exactly what city they're in.
The gas attendant looks up, and replies "Saskatoon, Saskatewan"
The man turns back to his wife and says, "Sorry honey, I guess we'll have to keep going until we find somebody who speaks english"
...counterfeiting saves Canadians $30 billion per year
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Argument: An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition, an intellectual process.
Which brings us to the next word of the day.
Contradicting: Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes.