Anti-Piracy Enforcer Degban Publishes Some Info-less Graphics Stating Atlanta Is File Sharingest Place On Earth
from the lies,-damned-lies-and-whatever-the-hell-this-is dept
Degban, the anti-piracy company that once took down comedian Dave Gorman's Flickr account because it thought photos of distinctive typography were actually its client's porn (and then blamed it on being hacked), has put together some very interesting (that's a colloquialism for "??!?") piracy numbers at its site.Degban's "State of Piracy" page introduces itself with some rather ominous wording about piracy and the importance (and difficulty) of compiling accurate numbers.
When it comes to statistical data regarding content piracy, the complexity of the data and its abundance is utterly mind boggling. The data channels are scattered across geographical borders and scientific dimensions. The nature of the matter effects the data gathering process, resulting in datasets with chaotic orders and unclean results sets.And some very fine "statical" data it is. The first chart posted is of the pie variety, breaking down the "market share" of several file storage lockers. Most of the contenders hover somewhere between 4-6% of the "market," possibly giving some credence to the MPAA's claims that Megaupload made the Internet go 'round by driving 99% of the traffic that wasn't Netflix (heavily paraphrased).
It is of grave importance, regardless of the challenge, to understand the trends and fashions behind content piracy as a thriving organism . Furthermore, appreciation of statical [sic] data regarding content piracy can be advantageous from a business intelligence point of view.
The data Degban has collected also shows the US firmly holding the lead in terms of "Origins of Pirate Peers." (USA! USA! USA!) How this number (185,290) is derived remains a mystery, but whatever it is, it's nearly nine times as much as Russia (28,001). So... who's doing all this piracy? Atlantans, apparently.
As can be seen by this chart, Atlanta is more than twice as piratey as Tacoma (?!?), the second place pirate haven, in terms of numbers lying along a Y-axis. Again, no further information is provided as to what these numbers represent, but we can certainly assume that Atlanta is the problem and Tacoma isn't helping. Once we venture beyond these two homegrown pirate bays, we see pirating is a major issue in such metropolises as Chalfont, PA and Iselin, NJ. Other cities/villages/unincorporated townships appear on the list as well, leading to questions of "Where is that, exactly?" and "Didn't that one guy used to live there... the serial killer/general store proprietor?" Cities with large populations -- New York and LA -- are pretty far down the list, which might make a lesser anti-piracy company question the quality of its data.
Degban really drives home the "Atlantans heart pirating" point with its next info-less graphic.
From this graphic portrayal of the United States battling a post-adolescent breakout of Venn diagram remnants, we can only draw one conclusion: if piracy is to be stopped, Atlanta has got to go. No more DMCA requests. No more lousy legislation. No more half-assed, self-serving infographics. You kill something by cutting off its head. The MPAA will be able to return millions of bag boys to their copyright-protected jobs just as soon as someone detaches Atlanta from the internet. And, from what I can tell of the map above, at that point, nearly all piracy will have gone away. If only Degban had made this clear earlier, we could have done away with all these lawsuits and focused in on the real piracy cancer: Atlanta.
Now, the numbers contributing to these SHOCKING bar graphs might possibly be found in this detailed, interactive (click over to Degban's site to experience this in all its glory) Google Map, which pinpoints where these "peers" are located, as well as the number of peers operating at each inverted teardrop.
Yes. There are some numbers in there, alright. Some low numbers. In fact, it's tough to find any location with more than 5 "peers." How these scattered points add up to over 10,000 pirating Atlantans is beyond me, especially considering Atlanta itself has no data point at all. None. Zip. Zero. Clearly, Degban processes data in a far advanced way, in which "0" peers means, "more than double the piracy impact of Tacoma, in which Tacoma is the number two piracy center."
You may also want to check out the dates on this map. It looks like the last data harvest was back in the spring of 2010. "OLD NEWS!!!" I hear you yell like a bunch of irate
This section is regularly and automatically kept up to date.From the looks of it, "regularly" means "once per decade." And "automatically" means "please delete this word from this sentence before publishing this page."
So, we have a bunch of numbers that don't add up, aren't current and do little more than randomly drop circles on maps and rub bars affectionately up against sky-high Y-axises. And yet, Degban is a well-known name in the piracy world, one that understands the "grave importance" of accurate and up-to-date statistics. To fight your enemy successfully, you must know them, and from what I'm seeing here, Degban is nearly 100% sure someone's pirating stuff somewhere.
Godspeed, number wranglers! Remind me to keep one hand on my content when passing through the muggy climes of Hotlanta or the suicidal murkiness of upstate Washington! And tell Vkontakte.ru that everyone's extremely disappointed in its lack of effort on the file sharing front.
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Filed Under: atlanta, data, file sharing, research
Companies: degban
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Well as long as we're making up numbers...
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Re: Well as long as we're making up numbers...
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If so...what is it they're trying to say? That there are so few peers that the claims of a creative apocalypse are obviously overblown, or that there are so many but since the overall creative industry is still raking in record amounts of money, that we shouldn't be worried at all?
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Exciting reading, but I don't get your point.
There is this interesting admission: "giving some credence to the MPAA's claims that Megaupload made the Internet go 'round by driving 99% of the traffic that wasn't Netflix". So at least YOU'RE beginning to use real numbers.
Now put the admission that Megaupload cut into "Hollywood" sales with common law as the basis of copyright, and your pro-pirate stance looks a lot like advocating theft.
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Re: Exciting reading, but I don't get your point.
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Re: Exciting reading, but I don't get your point.
Megaupload cutting into Hollywood sales is the basis of copywrite? What?
Also the theft/stealing claim has been...
ah screw it.
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Re: Exciting reading, but I don't get your point.
I'll boil it down for you, since you've just (again) admitted how stupid you are.
THESE GRAPHICS MAKE NO SENSE!
The pie chart has a lot of percentages, but doesn't say what they are (Tim, are you sure it's market share? I don't see that anywhere in the pie chart graphic)
The bar chart is ridiculous. Is it seriously saying that in a country of about 350 million people, there's only 185,000 torrenters?
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Re: Re: Exciting reading, but I don't get your point.
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Re: Exciting reading, but I don't get your point.
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Re: Re: Exciting reading, but I don't get your point.
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Re: Re: Exciting reading, but I don't get your point.
The real point is that these are the kinds of companies that provide the "evidence" for copyright lawsuits and (indirectly) provide the data that forms the basis for copyright legislation.
As anyone can see, the data is full of holes, but this is the data that "they" will work with.
So, next time some idiot proposes legislation "because piracy", or some Prenda wannabe starts a lawsuit campaign against "pirates!", remember that this is the kind of data that they have.
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Re: Re: Re: Exciting reading, but I don't get your point.
Basing decisions on hard facts or logic instead of guestimates altogether would be even better than even real info about guestimates too, but that is just asking for way too much.
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Re: Re: Re: Exciting reading, but I don't get your point.
This is the sad truth of how things are. Luckily, some people call these organizations on their bogus statistics as evidenced by one of the Ars Technica writers who examined some RIAA stats on musicians:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/have-we-lost-41-percent-of-our-musicians-de pends-on-how-you-the-riaa-count/
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Re: Exciting reading, but I don't get your point.
THE
FUCK
UP!!
So sick of your IMMEDIATELY jumping into EVERY fucking thread so you can exercise your "Gotta Get Mike!" muscle. Half the time you don't even post anything related to the topic, you just HAVE to be Mr. Attention Whore and scream "ME! ME! ME!" at every turn.
Start your own fucking blog if you want a more pro-copyright forum. Oh right, you cant, because a) no one would come to it except entrenched industry players and b) you've never succeeded at anything in your life, and would just fail at this too, so instead of trying to improve yourself or your skills, you wallow in self-hate and troll boards of those who actually DO something with their lives.
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Re: Re: Exciting reading, but I don't get your point.
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Re: Exciting reading, but I don't get your point.
"There is this interesting admission: "giving some credence to the MPAA's claims that Megaupload made the Internet go 'round by driving 99% of the traffic that wasn't Netflix". So at least YOU'RE beginning to use real numbers."
Was SARCASM, you stupid shit.
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Re: Exciting reading, but I don't get your point.
You still haven't given us any basis for this out-of-left-field "common law copyright theory" of yours.
On the other hand, Karl has completely demolished this "theory" here.
You just keep on yapping and ankle-biting on every article, don't you? Even when you are dead-wrong. Amazing.
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Re: Re: Exciting reading, but I don't get your point.
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Re: Exciting reading, but I don't get your point.
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Re: Re: Exciting reading, but I don't get your point.
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There are lies, damned lies,
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Tacoma, really?
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Re: Tacoma, really?
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Re:
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Re: Re:
Piracy peer level is obviously calculated by taking the population of the city, dividing it by zero and then multiplying it by the square root of the area of the city multiplied by -1 plus a number you made up. Thusly:
PPL=(pop/0) * sqrt(area*-1) + made_up_number
Oh, and you obviously do these operations in R, because otherwise you wouldn't be "keeping it real".
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Why do so many cities lie on the same latitude?
Why are there so many places in the ocean (real pirating pirates?)?
Why is Spokane in Idaho?
Why is it that pirates only pirate in small cities?
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Re:
To make the smuggling routes between them more efficient.
Why are there so many places in the ocean (real pirating pirates?)?
Yes, really real piraty pirating pirates, like Pirate Mike Masnik!!!1!
Why is Spokane in Idaho
Shhhh... no ones supposed to know!
Why is it that pirates only pirate in small cities?
Duh... they're easier to sail in and out of withdrawing as much attention... I feel like you aren't paying attention around here anymore :P
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Re: Re:
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But such pretty colors
Key links at the bottom of the page:
I want a refund of my time spent staring at unlabeled y-axes.
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Maybe he found me?
Must be it, It's me, I'm the hotspot!
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"the trends and fashions behind content piracy as a thriving organism"? e.o
omfgwtf
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Though axises sounds wrong, isn't it axes?
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