Home Taping Didn’t Kill Music
(crossposted from CreativeFreedom.org.nz)
Now it’s the UKs turn for fake piracy statistics. A report commissioned by a government body called the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property claims that “Downloading costs billions,” and that “estimates as to the overall lost revenues if we include all creative industries [...] reach £10 billion and a loss of 4,000 jobs”. The only problem is that the figures were estimates from a 2004 industry press release with no scientific basis, and as shown in an article in The Guardian the claims don’t even stand up the slightest scrutiny, adding that the figures would only make sense if people spent £175 a week or £8,750 a year on CDs, movies, and TV (!). The author adds, “Now I am always suspicious of this industry, because they have produced a lot of dodgy figures over the years. I also doubt that every download is lost revenue since, for example, people who download more also buy more music”. Another article gives some obvious advice to law makers that “If people want to share content they will find another way to do it,” he said. “It is more about education and allowing people to get content easily and cheaply that will make a difference. This idea that it is all peer to peer and somehow the ISPs can just stop it is very naive.”. Quite.
