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$200B Lost To Counterfeiting? Back It Up
An anonymous reader writes "Over the weekend, the NY Times ran a story about how the recession has impacted product counterfeiters. In it, the reporter regurgitates the oft-repeated claim that counterfeiting 'costs American businesses an estimated $200 billion a year.' Techdirt's Mike Masnick asks the Times reporter to back up that assertion, noting two recent reports (by the GAO and the OECD) that suggest the actual number is much lower, and quoting two reporters who have actually looked at the numbers and found (a) the real number is probably less than $5 billion, and (b) the $200 billion number can be traced back to a totally unsourced (read: made-up) magazine claim from two decades ago."
Trying to get more free money from the government?
Gasp!
I don't see how counterfeit products could do much damage to the US job market. Most of the legit products are made overseas too, right?
Help me fix my brother's injured butt!
On one hand, they are trying to salvage old media, and on the other hand they are trying to kill efforts like Wikileaks.
It seems pretty obvious.
CNN can just say anything they want, even if it's completely inaccurate and has no sources to back it up. They can just say their source is secret, and nobody is even going to ask.
Wikileaks, OTOH, shows you the actual docs. That's why they are being persecuted as criminals.
Encyclopedia Britannica is written by an unknown number of employees under unknown circumstances, and they cite no sources clearly (In the best case, they just cite a bunch of sources that might or might not back up their claims, and there's no direct way to check them easily).
Wikipedia is edited by the general public, each edit can be easily identified and accredited to a single author, and all sources are directly linked to in most cases.
And yet, Encyclopedia Britannica is considered more credible than Wikipedia, even when it's been shown that it's far more inaccurate, not to mention outdated.
Old media has to die, but the almighty economic powers that run this world won't let it go without a fight.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Five billion dollars is still a lot of money.
But put the numbers in perspective.
US GDP $14,260,000,000,000 (2009 estimate, courtesy of the CIA)
$200 Billion equals 1.4% of the GDP
$5 Billion equals 0.035% of the GDP
One is a problem worthy of immediate attention. The other is a problem to worry about when nothing else is pressing.
Don't tell me to get a life. I had one once. It sucked.