[LINK] DVD pirating costing industry $1.7b: Debus

[Stilgherrian]

On 10/11/2008, at 4:58 PM, Brendan Scott wrote:
> Stilgherrian wrote:
>> Bob Debus' office has told me that the figures come from an  
>> Australian
>> Institute of Criminology report "Intellectual property crime and
>> enforcement in Australia" published 3 October. http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/rpp/94/
>
> []
>
> Having only flipped through it, I am a little gobsmacked. The report  
> appears to simply source its information from the industry without  
> any critical analysis.

That'd be right.

It's fairly common for industry (and therefore industry-advantaging)  
numbers to end up being quoted as they're the only ones around, and  
then once they appear in a report like this it becomes "the Australian  
Institute of Criminology says..."

The Screen Australia estimates are nowhere near as scary. Report menu  
at http://www.afc.gov.au/gtp/video.html and piracy cost figures at http://www.afc.gov.au/gtp/wvanalysis.html 
  ... 47 million illegal DVDs circulated, 52 million legitimate sold.  
Cost to industry $231 million.

The graphs at http://www.afc.gov.au/gtp/wvprodretail.html show how the  
industry has actually boomed, hardly in decline.


> In any event the report still doesn't seem to support the $1.7B  
> figure quoted for DVD piracy.

No, there's a careful collocation of two sentences. “Those issues are  
worth considering by any member of the public who thinks purchasing  
counterfeit DVDs is a victimless crime. In copyright offending alone  
revenue loss to industry groups in Australia is estimated to be around  
$1.7 billion each year.” The "copyright offending" is ALL copyright  
offences lumped together, thought the first sentence implies we're  
talking about DVDs.

Stil


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