OECD The Latest To Show Lobbyists Exaggerate Losses Due To Piracy/Counterfeiting

from the lobbyists-exaggerate?-you-can't-be-serious... dept

Thu, May 10th 2007 4:07pm — Mike Masnick

Earlier this week we noted that the latest GAO report found that industry estimates of the impact of counterfeiting and piracy on the economy were greatly exaggerated, and now the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has come out with a similar report, noting not just that the numbers are exaggerated, but that the exaggeration was done by lobbyists to further political policies. No, really? The report does still say that counterfeiting and piracy is a problem -- but just that it's not nearly as big a problem as industry representatives would have you believe, and that industry reps might be better off not focusing so heavily on passing stronger intellectual property laws around the world. Not surprisingly, the very same lobbyists were quick to trash the OECD report, and even (you knew this was coming) claim that their estimates on piracy and counterfeiting were conservative. So here we have two non-industry groups with no reason for bias reporting that the "loss" numbers industry representatives claim are clearly bogus. Does this mean that the media will stop reporting the industry's totally unsupported numbers as if they were factual?

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11 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 10 May 2007 @ 4:45pm

Does this mean that the media will stop reporting the industry's totally unsupported numbers as if they were factual?
As long as the industry remains a good source of money for the media they will likely continue to parrot whatever line the industry wants them to.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 May 2007 @ 5:09pm

Ummmmm, no!!!!??? Just my thoughts.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 May 2007 @ 5:38pm

I am not a thief!
I'm an honest, taxpaying citizen who doesn't have a problem paying for movies, music and any other content. However, I'm fucking sick and tired of being treated like a potential thief by the music and entertainment industry. The RIAA, MPAA and their lobbyists can go to hell. Your respective industries are losing money because you're producing crap that affluent consumers don't want to buy. Piracy should be the least of your worries. Middle-class people like me don't have to steal content. We're just not buying the crap you package and call entertainment, but it isn't worth stealing to have it for free, either.
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GoblinJuice, 10 May 2007 @ 6:11pm

@3 - It's obvious you're part of a multi-million dollar piracy ring, otherwise you wouldn't scream so loudly about being treated badly. :-P

Sarcasm, folks! Learn it! Love it!
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Anonymous Coward, 10 May 2007 @ 8:01pm

Re: Multi-Million Dollar Piracy Ring
LOL. Yeah I'm rolling in the dough with the proceeds from ill-gotten gains. My specialty is peddling bootleg Britney Spears video and audio. There's a real underground market in North America for that kind of dope. Addicts line up around the corner so they can buy the latest Britney bootleg CD before it hits the stores. Last time the cops had to break up a fight in the line, and the addicts were camped out overnight on the street waiting for their Britney fix.
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A chicken passeth by, 10 May 2007 @ 10:41pm

Meh, anti-piracy measures made my job a nightmare. I still long for the days of VLKs where I can just simply do a replacement install and not wonder if it's registered-to-that- particular-computer-and-won't-work-on-any-other-even-if-hardware-
is-the-same.
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mike allen, 11 May 2007 @ 1:08am

perhaps
The anti piracy people should be out of a job they are desperate to justify their very existence. knowing they are despised hated and now proved to be liers. but i would to know there definition of piracy after all a few years back you would buy album put your favorite tracks on tape ( remember tape ) to play in the car no one bothered now you have to buy the damn thing 3 or more times to play on different formats stupid. They will never justify their existence by the above tactics.
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Fred Flint, 11 May 2007 @ 6:29am

The Color Black Is Actually White
It's a sad fact of life a large portion of the population will eventually believe black is white if you repeat it often enough. I've seen this my entire life coming from politicians, religions, big oil companies etcetera.

I think perhaps not enough people have evolved quite far enough to trust applied logic over rote memorization and maybe promotion of this phenomenon is the reason why schools used to require a lot of straight memorization but there were never any classes in logic.
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Wizard Prang, 11 May 2007 @ 7:03am

Lies, damned lies and statistics
Not every download is a lost sale.

Not every lost sale is a full-retail-price loss.

Not every full retail price is USA full retail prices.

And remember folks, 66.4% of all statistics are made up on the spot :)
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Anonymous Coward, 12 May 2007 @ 1:28am

Yeah prang, basically what the IRAA and all those douche bags do is estimate all the illegal downloads for the year and see how much money that would be if those were all sales.

Now seriously would any one reall go see "Hot Fuzz" in the move theater for 10 dollars, fuck that. Now if its free, thats another story, I'll watch a shitty movie for free.

And also I've downloaded a movie that looked crappy then loved it then bought it on DVD.
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SparcMan, 27 Jun 2007 @ 11:35am

Acutally, I think they just compare their actual profit with what they were expecting/hoping for and blame the difference on piracy. "We sold 10,000 less "Crappy Movie" DVDs than we expected. So 10,000 people must have pirated it instead of buy!!"
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