Slashdot Mirror
Lies, Damned Lies, and the UK Copyright Industry
artg writes "Ben Goldacre writes about invalid and misleading 'science' in the Guardian. Here's
his report on the statistics behind a recent press story that reported illegal downloading to involve 120 billion pounds worth of material."
Full article is posted on Ben's blog at http://www.badscience.net/2009/06/home-taping-didnt-kill-music/ (sorry Ben for the slashdotting) - the guardian tends to remove bits of his writing in print/on their website (for space reasons I assume).
The comments to TFA (I guess I'm not a real ./er either) include links to a properly rigorous academic study (and some news articles) that shows that downloaders spend more money, not less: for every CD downloaded, they buy 0.4 additional CDs. The study's authors also "find evidence that purchases of other forms of entertainment such as cinema and concert tickets, and video games tend to increase with music purchases."
http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/ippd-dppi.nsf/eng/ip01457.html
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2006/03/6418.ars
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4718249.stm
Classic coup de grâce in the article: "Like I said: as far as I'm concerned, everything from this industry is false, until proven otherwise." Why are industry statistics still endlessly repeated in the media? It makes you wonder what market the newspapers using these fabricated stats are aiming for, because the majority of filesharers would laugh into their porridge at the thought of buying every film, track and OS they downloaded!
The Guardian tends to edit his pieces a bit when they put them up. If you look at his blog post on badscience.net containing the original version you'll see that sentence links to another Guardian piece about a study showing that people who download more also buy more music - he's quoting from that rather than making it up...
http://www.badscience.net/2009/06/home-taping-didnt-kill-music/ has the original and you'll see it links to http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/apr/21/study-finds-pirates-buy-more-music
Poor form of the Guardian to remove that link.
Ben Goldacre also makes up some facts, like this one "...for example, people who download more also buy more music."
No, you're wrong.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4718249.stm
People who illegally share music files online are also big spenders on legal music downloads, research suggests. Digital music research firm The Leading Question found that they spent four and a half times more on paid-for music downloads than average fans.
Exactly - this is basically the parable of the broken window. Also see: http://notnews.today.com/2009/06/06/downloading-keeping-billions-inside-the-uk/ .
Of course, I'm not surprised that the RIAA twist the truth, but to hear Government advisers falling for the fallacy? Either they are ignorant of basic economics, or they are intentionally being deceitful on economic matters. Either way, it's no wonder the economy is going down the tubes.
Kids these days. What do you learn in school?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_sterling#Anglo-Saxon
No, the pound coin in its current form hasn't been around for more than a few decades. But the pound as a monetary unit is more than a thousand years old and did indeed represent the value of one pound of silver. The first coin to to be worth this much was, afaik, the Sovereign which was introduced in the late fifteenth century.
What's your definition of "very long"?
May we live long and die out