Commerce Department Pushing For New "Copyright Czar"

TechDirt is reporting that those all-too-familiar "stats" surrounding the cost of piracy are being trotted out in an attempt to push through a new "Copyright Czar" position. "In urging President Bush to sign into law the ProIP bill, which would give him a copyright czar (something the Justice Department had said it doesn't want), the US Chamber of Commerce is claiming that 750,000 American jobs have been lost to piracy. Yet, it doesn't cite where that number comes from."

Comments

750,000??

[jgtg32a]

Are there even that many people working in the music and movies/tv industry in this country?

Uh huh

[Xeth]

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 383,000 people employed in the Motion picture and sound recording industries in September 2008.

My money is on the idea that they took the amount the industries estimate they lose from piracy and then divided that by some moderate wage.

Re:Uh huh

[halcyon1234]

Heck, think about it this way:

There are about 300 million (thousand thousand) people in the States

According to All Knowledge Ever, 24.6% are minors, and 12.7% are of retired age. That means there are only 188 million "employable" citizens.

The same BLS says the unemployment rate is 6%. That means there are 11.3 million unemployed citizens

If every single one of those lost jobs resulted in a currently unemployed person, then 6.65% of all unemployed persons were from the entertainment industry.

Now, assuming that their number isn't complete and utter bullshatistics-- nah, I think I'll just call BS and be done with this one.

Inefficency

[Wildclaw]

claiming that 750,000 American jobs have been lost to piracy

Overexaggerated number for sure, but jobs may very well have been lost because of piracy. But, so what? Let me formulate the matters in another light.

750,000 American jobs would have been wasted if piracy hadn't existed to combat the inherent inefficencies in the copyright and IP systems.

Jobs are good if they actually produce something useful to society. Otherwise they are just a big waste, and do little more than shuffle resources around because the current system don't have a better way to allocate it.

Even if more actual intellectual property were produced with stronger IP laws, it still isn't sure that it would be a better idea. The real value of IP isn't how much is produced, but how much is produced times how well spread it is among the population. Also, that total value has to be balanced against the cost of producing it.

Say that 700,000 more jobs would be created. That is a multi billion cost. And what would be the gain. More tv? More music? More movies? It isn't like there is a lack of choice right now.

Japanese Anime Translation

[Khisanth Magus]

Although it is more in the thousands, possibly as high as ten thousand, it is true that there has been a significant amount of job loss due to piracy in the companies that bring japanese anime over to the US. I've talked with voice actors as well as people who run those companies, and piracy really has hurt them. Some companies are closing up shop, others are just having to severely cut back to make ends meet. This was never a large profit business in the first place, and with people downloading it so much as opposed to buying the DVDs they can't manage to squeak by.

The irony of this is that the "copyright czar" would probably just ignore this as the MPAA and RIAA aren't involved. Not that I'm advocating law suits against people who do pirate it, as I think that is way over the top, just pointing out that people HAVE lost their jobs due to piracy.

Re:Henry Paulson

[mcgrew]

Thanks for not linking his wikipedia entry. Unfortunately for me, I looked him up. Do not click that link! Jesus Christ but that's one freaky looking fuckweed! In order to save you the horror of seeing that man's face (makes goatse look like it came from a children's book) I'll quote wikipedia's entry on who he is:

Henry Merritt "Hank" Paulson Jr. (born March 28, 1946) is the United States Treasury Secretary and member of the International Monetary Fund Board of Governors. He previously served as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Goldman Sachs.

Born in Palm Beach, Florida, to Marianna Gallaeur and Henry Merritt Paulson, a wholesale jeweler,[1] he was raised in Barrington Hills, Illinois. He was raised as a Christian Scientist.[2] Paulson attained the rank of Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America.[3][4]

A star athlete at Barrington High School, Paulson was a champion wrestler and stand out football player, graduating in 1964. Paulson received his Bachelor of Arts in English from Dartmouth College in 1968;[5] at Dartmouth he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and was an All Ivy, All East, and honorable mention All American as an offensive lineman.

He met his wife Wendy during his senior year. The couple have two adult children, Henry Merritt III and Amanda Clark, and became grandparents in June 2007. They maintain homes in Washington, DC and Barrington Hills, Illinois.

In 1970 Paulson received a Master of Business Administration degree from Harvard Business School.[6]

He is, in short, an anti-nerd. He is the complete and polar opposite of you and me.

I think it's obvious now why the banking industry crashed and the stock market is crashing. It's because of people like Henry Merritt "Hank" Paulson Jr. who will not lose their jobs and homes and who will NOT go hungry as a direct result of their actions, as you and I may. Not as a result of our actions, but as a result of HIS and the actions of people (and I use that term loosely) just like him.

If you fear people like Osama Bin Laden more than you fear people like Henry Merritt "Hank" Paulson Jr., IMO you're brain dead stupid.