Commerce Dept Cites Bogus Stats, Chamber Of Commerce Uses Them To Ask Bush To Accept Copyright Czar
from the bogus-stats-are-fun dept
We've seen it time and time again, where totally bogus stats about the "costs" of "piracy" are floated (usually by lobbyists) and then suddenly accepted as fact. It's even worse when it's government officials citing the stats as fact. Yet, we've got that happening again. In urging President Bush to sign into law the ProIP bill, which would give him a copyright czar (something the Justice Department had said it it doesn't want), the US Chamber of Commerce is claiming that 750,000 American jobs have been lost to piracy. Yet, it doesn't cite where that number comes from.Wired's David Kravets tries to track down the source but finds no one can quite figure it out. Instead, they each point to different gov't organizations which have all quoted the number -- often citing each other, but no one pointing out where it actually came from. Chances are, of course, that the stat comes from a variety of reports, like the easily debunked piracy impact report from the BSA, put together by IDG. That lists out a number for job losses in the software industry that's simply untrue, and is based on only the negative impact of "piracy" impacting jobs, leaving out any positive impact (i.e., if a company used only pirated software, it could hire more people). That's not to defend piracy, but to note that the job loss claim is completely made up -- and now repeated by a variety of different government officials based on... nothing.
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Filed Under: bogus stats, commerce department, copyright czar, stats
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This is the Bush Administration?
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Sorry... clarified the headline.
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Re: Just some guy
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Just the Facts
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BTW, have you ever seen a CoC number that was not flaky, and I am not talking just about copyright? CoC support of taxpayer dollars to support professional sports facilities quickly comes to mind.
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I did not start buying the stuff I had been pirating aside from copies of XP (at an M$ store discount ... not worth retail)
What I did for the most part is find free alternatives that worked just as well as the stuff I'd been stealing.
Someone should run the numbers and figure out what the elasticity of demand is in people who pirate apps.
As soon as they realize every pirated copy does not equal a sale we'll be better off.
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EDIT for ya
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Yes, but issue was not about the content of your post or the original article, but the headline of your post. Before you changed the headline from "Commerce Dept Cites Bogus Stats In Asking Bush To Accept Copyright Czar" to clear things up, I think the nitpick by "Just some guy" was valid.
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Yup. On rereading it, he (and you) are correct. I've fixed the headline.
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¡Pinches Mentiras!
There are three degrees of falsehood: the first is a fib, the second is a lie, and then come statistics.
There are three degrees in liars: the liar simple, the damned liar, and the expert witness.
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A paradox?
I imagine the research going something like this:
"John, where did you get the 750,000 number? I got it from Sue. Where did Sue get it? From Bob. Where did Bob get it? From Joe. Where did Joe get it? From Dave. Where did Dave get it? From John."
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Hey Rocky, for my next trick ..
I was watching the presidential debate last night and Senator McCain said that we have lost 700,000 jobs. This would be a TOTAL of 700,000 jobs.
How do we lose 750,000 jobs to piracy alone if we only lost about 700,000 jobs total? Of course, we would have to assume that McCain's figure was correct.
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Others are using the 750,000 number as well
Also, FWIW, the 750,000 number from the Wired article is also quoted by the US Customs and Border Protection, which says the number comes from the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition, but the IACC says the number comes from, you guessed it, the CBP.
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Sounds like global warming....
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