[LINK] $60 million music piracy operation

[Chirgwin, Richard]

James - I go with TL on this one. $60 million of "what" is the question.
It's the old "street value" question. If they're saying "these three people
took orders worth $60 million" then the question begged is "why give money
to these guys but not buy the stuff legit?"

If they're saying "$60 million worth of lost revenue to the music industry"
then the question is "says whom?"

Numbers like this need to be challenged by journalists, but never are. The
need arises, IMO, because inflated and faked "here's the cost of piracy"
numbers are used, in part, to support arguments which erode the rights of
citizens. 

Back to the $60 number. If it's $60M worth of downloads, somehow plucked out
of the air, then I'm damn sure we had that discussion on Link before - about
the vast amount of storage and bandwidth needed to support that scale of
operation.

Richard Chirgwin

> -----Original Message-----
> From: James Pearce [mailto:james.pearce at zdnet.com.au]
> Sent: Monday, 28 April 2003 10:02
> To: link at anu.edu.au
> Subject: Re: [LINK] $60 million music piracy operation
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> > >Federal Police arrest three in $60 million music piracy operation
> >  >The Australian Federal Police have charged three people 
> with copyright
> > offences following the search of four premises in Sydney 
> yesterday >in
> > connection with what is alleged to be one of the largest copyright
> > infringement cases in Australia involving potential losses across
> > the >music industry in excess of $60 million.
> >
> >
> >
> > I cant find the back of my envelope at the moment.
> >
> > But my initial analysis is:
> >
> > $60m - my arse!
> 
> Apparently they had around 7 million visitors, which is just 
> under $10 a
> visitor, so not too unbelievable. What's weird is the reason 
> they were doing
> it - I've been told they were trying to flog compilation CDs 
> (of pirated
> tracks) and were promoting these products using the free 
> music downloads. Of
> the same songs? It doesn't make much sense. I'm wondering how 
> much money
> they were making, since they invested a significant sum in 
> setting up the
> computer networks.
> 
> James
> 
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