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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."
Loosing sales to somebody who has no money (extremely put)? Would everyone downloading be able to pay and is just refusing to do so? Highly doubtful. Maybe sharing of things a basic human trait and all the business money making schemes run against it?
And this is informative? The Federal Reserve has the power to print money and make equivalent digital records on their ledger. The currency is not backed by anything. How is that counterfeiting? If you don't like the paper they print, which has no intrinsic value, feel free to trade it to people who value it for gold, carrots, tin foil, or whatever else floats your boat. Luckily for you, the US government asks to receive said pieces of paper in their tax collection. If it's counterfeit and worthless, you'd have no problem giving them all that useless paper, woundn't you?
Counterfeiting is a key world that will separate the libertarians that at least attempt to be rational from the loonies. I doubt that even their high priests Hayek and Mises would like them.
How can we tell that revenue is diverted from the genuine producer?
I want a Bugatti Veyron, but as i am a peasant, I have a fifteen year old ford escort 1100. What if Bugatti come after me for the revenue diverted from them? will they demand the £350 that I paid for the ford, or the £1,000,000 that i would have paid for the veyron?
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.