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."

Comments

Downloading keeping "billions" inside the UK

[David Gerard]

More than seven million Britons use illegal downloading sites that keep billions of pounds circulating inside the British economy rather than being sent overseas to US media companies or obscure tax havens, despite almost everything on offer being appalling rubbish no sane person would pay a penny for, according to unnamed researchers copying a passing number found in a 2004 press release from music industry lawyers trying to drum up business.

Intellectual Property Minister David Lammy said the report brought home the impact illegal downloads had on the UK economy as a whole. "If we take as read the music industry's assumption that every download is a lost sale, then billions of pounds are freed up for ordinary people to spend of things of actual economic substance to keep local businesses healthy, rather than chasing phantom pseudo-value from things that have an inherent cost of production of zero. This makes the whole economy more efficient and lets money go where it is actually useful, rather than to Bono's numbered account in the Virgin Islands."

The government says it will be hard to change attitudes to free downloading, particularly from the entrenched old media parasites. "Studies consistently show that downloaders buy more music. We have to stop this and get them downloading dodgy rips from BitTorrent, rather than official high-quality versions from iTunes."

The report also noted that new, faster broadband services could increase file-sharing, which was already more than half of net traffic in the UK. The ISPs modestly declined credit for their part in helping Britain's financial future, noting that it was their customers, the great British public, who had voted with their browsers to do the hard work of keeping the country afloat.

Re:Full story

[deglr6328]

There's several videos floating around with him too that are definitely worth watching. He is a very sharp mind and it pleases me greatly to see his urgently needed skeptical analysis getting the press coverage it so thoroughly deserves.

Re:Hypocrite alert!

[freedom_india]

I would have to disagree, after all if I can get the music for free, why would anyone ever pay

I can get poo for free as a manure for my Garden.
Why do i go and buy manure, red soil, natural fertilizer and all that crap from Home Depot?

Re:Lost?

[hairyfeet]

Not to mention those of us that have actually found new shows and bought them thanks to P2P. For example, in the late 90s I hear all this buzz about this new show that is a remake of a bad movie I had seen called Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Supposedly unlike the movie this was actually really good, with good acting and storytelling. But where I lived there was no WB to be had.

So I downloaded a couple of episodes to see if it was any good. I actually enjoyed them and I ended up buying the entire Joss Whedon collection, including the Angel series and Firefly. At $50 a season, for the seven seasons of Buffy, Five of Angel, and one of Firefly you are looking at $650, not including a few collectibles and various promo stuff from the shows that my late sister bought me. All told probably close to $1000 was spent on a show that I never would have bought if it wasn't for P2P, because after seeing the movie I honestly didn't see how they could make it not suck.

I'm sure there are plenty like me, that are happy to buy something we enjoy if we are given fair value, and who for one reason or another don't have access to many of these shows or other entertainment. If I would have saw Buffy the Vampire Slayer boxed sets in a B&M store I never would have given it a second thought if I hadn't gotten to see a couple of episodes on P2P. After all, who would have thought any series based on a Kristie Swanson movie could actually be entertaining?

Re:Doh!

[tagno25]

Assuming only 1k electrons in a bit, then a bit would be 9.10938215(45)x10^-28 kg.
If we then assume that every p2p user downloads at 100kbps, then in 1 second a single user would have acquired 9.10938215(45)x10^-23 kg Assuming there are only 1 billion users in one second 9.10938215(45)x10^-15 kg worth of data would be transfered After approximately 317 years only 9.10938215(45)x10^-5 kg worth of data would have been transfered

I do not see how even one pound of data has been lost.

Re:Oh, really?

[Znork]

Of course, by making up unlikely numbers they divert attention from the even more insidious propaganda buried in the claim.

It's not money _lost_, it's money _saved_.

Downloading _saves_ the economy £120 Billion.

The money that doesn't get spent on media doesn't magically disappear. It's spent on other things instead. Jobs aren't lost, in fact, I'd wager the money saved creates more jobs in the local economy than money to the media industry which to a large extent doesn't go towards labour intensive activity, and in many cases simply goes out of the country.

Re:Oh, really?

[TheTurtlesMoves]

Trying to explain the demise of an obsolete business model..

The movie Dark knight cost about 185 million to make and took in a total revenue of over 1billion. Thats more than five times the original investment. Iron Man cost 140 million and made over 500 million. Transformers cost 151 million and made over 700 million. The list goes on.

That does not look like a demise of an industry to me. That looks like bloody good business. You can find similar statistics for music, however its somewhat harder to do. For example black eyed peas "Monkey Business" sold about 300k copies in its first week alone.

I think obsolete does not mean what you think it means.

Re:Oh, really?

[cliffski]

indeed. its money for old rope. Absolutely everyone who produces entertianment content is a millioanire and lives in a gold plated house.
No movie, game or tv show ever lost money, and we are all just pretendind that piracy costs people jobs.
In fact, the absolute guarntee of a 500% ROI is a genuine fact, despite the fact that this is in complete contravention of basic high school economics, because if it were true, you, and every other slashdotter would be falling over themselves to start up movie studios.

*sigh*