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How 136 People Became 7 Million Illegal File-Sharers
Barence writes "The British government's official figures on the level of illegal file sharing in the UK come from questionable research commissioned by the music industry. The Radio 4 show named More or Less examined the government's claim that 7m people in Britain are engaged in illegal file sharing. The 7m figure actually came from a report written about music industry losses for Forrester subsidiary Jupiter Research. The report was privately commissioned by none other than the UK's music trade body, the BPI. The 7m figure had been rounded up from an actual figure of 6.7m, gleaned from a 2008 survey of 1,176 net-connected households, 11.6% of which admitted to having used file-sharing software — in other words, only 136 people. That 11.6% was adjusted upwards to 16.3% 'to reflect the assumption that fewer people admit to file sharing than actually do it.' The 6.7m figure was then calculated based on an estimated number of internet users that disagreed with the government's own estimate. The wholly unsubstantiated 7m figure was then released as an official statistic."
Because statistics are hard and outrage is easy.
Whenever you estimate a statistic like that, you should also indicate the level of uncertainty surrounding the estimate. Why are they not reporting the upper and lower bounds of the confidence interval surrounding that estimate?
Using file-sharing software does not equate to sharing files illegally. I admit to using BitTorrent to download Fedora ISO's, and there's nothing illegal about that.
using file sharing software does not mean you pirate software or media.....
The summary tries to paint this study bad because it "downsides" the amount of filesharers
I presume by "downsides" you mean "reduces"? Well the summary says "That 11.6% was adjusted upwards to 16.3% 'to reflect the assumption that fewer people admit to file sharing than actually do it.'" So they actually UPPED the number of filesharers. This is objection #1 to "good research":
1. You do a survey to objectively measure the support of your hypothesis
2. The survey of a tiny sample indicates that filesharers are a pretty low percentage
3. You "adjust" this number -- otherwise known as "fudging the data" -- to better reflect your own hypothesis.
The same tactics in any scientific endeavor would get your papers retracted, your funding canceled, some sort of disciplinary action initiated, etc.
The second objection, and this applies to other studies too that try to make grand claims from small samples, is that it's A SMALL SAMPLE. For your survey to be representative, your sample has to be representative. It's also difficult to choose people independently at random, and without that assumption, all your basic statistics fall apart. Perhaps they went through a list of BT subscribers and pulled names at random -- but what if downloaders are overrepresented amongst BT subscribers? What if they only polled home internet users, but then used the "total number of internet users" -- which includes corporate subscribers -- to come up with their 11mil number? There are other possible, non-numerical issues too. What if the respondents confused downloading from bittorent with downloading from iTunes?
If you want many other examples of "bad science", read Ben Goldacre's blog
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
Is it ok to change "11.6%" to "16.3%" based on a "hunch"?
I'm not a statistician, this is an honest question
No sig for the moment.
If there was some previous result that only 2/3 of filesharers admit it when asked, then an upwards revision by 1/3 in an estimate would be defensible. A "hunch" is not quite as good evidence. of course.
I was objecting mainly to the "how 136 people became 7 million" title, which to my ears reads mainly as a criticism of the sample size. But whatever the problems with this estimate, the sample size wasn't really among them.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Is it ok to change "11.6%" to "16.3%" based on a "hunch"? I'm not a statistician, this is an honest question
IAAS, and the answer is no. That goes for the GP as well -- no one is contesting estimation theory, just that the fundamental assumptions are so grossly unmet in this "study" as to render it meaningless. And as someone else already commented, it's dangerous here because it's going to dictate public policy.
If you're going to "adjust" your objective findings, based on some bizarre assumption that a certain percentage of people will lie about file sharing, then why do a survey at all if not to create mathematical/sciency-sounding smoke and mirrors?
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
1. the same size is small.. probably too small to make the claims they did.
First statistics lesson I ever had, first thing the professor did was make an estimate based on 10 people about the whole population. He was correct, by the way. He went on to rant that anything that uses large amounts of people (by which he meant more than at most a few dozen) was not proper statistics. If you simply count everybody, it should be called "counting", you see, not statistics.
2. they altered the numbers on an estimate of how many people fileshare on the assumption that the number was under-reported.
And since they are right that the number turned out to be bigger in other studies, slightly. It seems a reasonable adaptation. It's easy to say it's unreasonable, of course. But they are absolutely correct that the number is most likely smaller. So how much should they adjust it ? Like I said, it seems a reasonable adjustment. Not absurdly high, not absurdly low.
3. conflict of interest... it's like the tobacco industry sponsoring studies claiming that smoking doesn't have anything to do with lung cancer... there is significant reason to believe that the study carries significant bias in favor of their conclusion and must at the least be repeated by other sources.
There don't exist studies that have no bias. Either research is funded by companies, or it's funded by government. Both have serious axes to grind, mostly pertaining to political ideology. If business intrest groups would not fund research we'd never have even the semblance of unbiased research that we have.
By the way, who should pay for studies ? Obviously the government has a vested interest in more legislation. The ifpi (us dept) has a vested interest in creating legal instruments to counteract filesharing. And the filesharers have a vested intrest in more "privacy", and legal instruments against ISPs (for the same reason a thief wants privacy, obviously, let's please not start the "what about those who only share openbsd", we all know that's not the filesharers being talked about).
How about we do the sane thing, and let all of them fund studies. Then read them all, and see what we believe to be true.
Just because people are biased, by the way, does not mean the truth can be biased. We are simply limited to imperfect instruments for reading the truth. Truth is absolute, and the number of filesharers is just a single number, not 2, not 5. And yes, we'll probably need a better definition and classification than "filesharers". The effects of filesharing are negative for artists (certainly for pop artists), and especially for the "music industry". There can be little doubt about that. How much damage is done, is anyone's guess. But by criticizing their observations, AND listening to them criticize our observations, we can hope to get closer to the real truth.
This is yet another example as to why the BBC is the finest broadcasting and journalistic organisation on the planet (I've never worked for them, sold to them or have any other financial connection other than the license fee).
They actually investigated something created by an industry group and found it to be bollocks and then reported it. The BBC are arguably the most "socialist" organisation in the democratic world (funded by a tax on everyone for the benefit of everyone) and yet they still question and challenge everything.
The US seriously needs something that questions vested interests and rubbish statistics as much as the BBC. Jon Stewart and Bill Maher are just comedians and FoxNews is just comedy.
Given a choice between the first amendment and the BBC, I'll take the BBC; its demonstrated more freedom of speech in a week than the US media has in a decade.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
And since they are right that the number turned out to be bigger in other studies, slightly. It seems a reasonable adaptation. It's easy to say it's unreasonable, of course. But they are absolutely correct that the number is most likely smaller. So how much should they adjust it ? Like I said, it seems a reasonable adjustment. Not absurdly high, not absurdly low.
Here's where I find a major problem. You do not fudge your data. Period. These other studies may show higher numbers, but do we have proof they weren't fudged as well?
There's too many stories about companies performing pharmecutical trials and then throwing the data away because it didn't present a positive light.
If you're going to adjust numbers, you better have a damn sound reasoning for it rather than "we have a hunch people lied, so..."
Indeed, let's look at the maths - supposing each person only shares 24 mp3s. By US standards at least, that's a cost of $1.92 million. So with 7 million file sharers, that's $13.44 trillion.
Now let's check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal) - wow, these 7 million people are causing damage to the UK economy equal to almost 5 times the entire GDP of the UK...
The study is effectively making the assumption that filesharing = copyright infringement.
I have a very hard time believing that the vast majority of people that use any filesharing application do so exclusivley for legit and non-copyright infringing purposes.
Given the vast quantity of content, I seriously doubt that very many people go through any sort of hassle to determine what is legit and what is not, which results in virtually everyone obtaining material that is copyrighted, regardless whether they know (or care). Given that, I think its a fair guess on their part that yes, most people that claim they are using file-sharing software do so to obtain material illegally.
I just don't understand the stance that most people on this board seem to take regarding this issue. How can everyone be so supportive of what very obviously amounts to theft? It appears to me that somehow people think it is their "right" to obtain copyrighted material for free. I just don't buy for a second that people who claim to only use file-sharing apps for legitimate purposes only actually do so.
If you do indeed use all file-sharing applications for 100% legit purposes, please educate me what you use these services for that makes them so very essential to cause these very emotional posts here.
To me, the number is meaningless in itself. The fact that government agencies have been using the number is the issue. Either they knew that the number was wrong or they didn't bother checking it. Both possibilities can point to incompetence or malice and reflect very badly on the people responsible.
You might be happy with government by making shit up and gut feelings but for the rest of us this is a good example of why government has no respect.
If they're going to "adjust" the numbers, why did they even bother doing the research at all? Why not just come out and say,"We didn't like what the numbers said, so we threw them away and we're making a WAG with some bullshit we're pulling out of our ass." I understand that they're a research (read "marketing") company, and so are constitutionally incapable of telling the plain truth because they could burst into flames, but it would be a new experience. And fun to watch!
When you want something built, come see me. If you want correct grammar and spelling, get a F*ing liberal arts student.
most of the anger is directed toward the music/movie industry's response to piracy- weaken/destroy fair use, demonize all p2p [possibly restricting its use in the future out of fear] suing people as a scare tactic, excessive/un-constitutional fines, DRMed media etc...
...I don't see why these tactics are unreasonable...
So, just so that you can protect your "copyrighted content" from being stolen by someone other than me, you believe that it is "reasonable" to use bogus or flawed "research" to fool the government into a) taking away my legal rights (fair use); b) criminalizing software that can be and is used for legal purposes (P2P); c) abuse our legal system (suing people as scare tactic/impose excessive/unconstitutional fines); and d) crippling your "copyrighted content" so that I cannot exercise my right of fair use after I have purchased your "copyrighted content" (DRM/refer back to a) )?
It is even more difficult to attach a value to the legitimate uses of file-sharing networks, but if you can point me at examples of how file-sharing systems have a positive economic impact on anyone, please let me know.
Really? So you don't see value in a content provider being able to reduce operating expenses by distributing their content via P2P? Just because you are too lazy to do a simple search using any common search engine doesn't mean such examples don't exist. And why exactly does it have to have a positive economic impact on anyone - why does it have to have any economic impact at all? There are many things that have neither a positive economic impact nor any economic impact whatsoever, should those be illegal too?
Just as easily as a random sample can accurately reflect a population as a whole, it can equally be skewed to be a completely inaccurate representation of the real world.
If by "just as easily" you mean "with an enormously lower probability", then yes. But then, that's what a statement of margin of error says.
Statistics isn't all that complicated, and what a statistical measure means can be both demonstrated and proven. You don't need to get all faux existential about how "it's all just a bunch of crap, man". You don't know what you're talking about.
Also, entropy? No such thing as random? Really? Don't inject physical phenomena you clearly don't understand in a discussion about pure mathematics.