It seems the Cartel of theives has been up to its old tricks again.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070624-how-to-get-canadian-piracy-laws-passed-use-old-bad-data.htmlThe movie and music businesses have long demanded a "Canadian DMCA," and it now looks like a Parliamentary committee supports their ideas.
Unfortunately, as Geist points out, the committee members are relying on some bad data.
Right up front, the report suggests that counterfeiting and piracy account for around five percent of all world trade. In 2007, this would mean that it's somewhere between $350 billion and $600 billion. But where did this number come from? As the report makes clear, this number was provided by industry witnesses rather than more neutral parties.
In fact, the five percent number wasn't even supplied by the OECD. It came from a 1997 study by the International Chamber of Commerce—again, hardly a disinterested party—and was eventually incorporated into the OECD report.
But why would industry witnesses supply a decade-old report? Surely there are more recent numbers available. In fact, there are. The OECD has been working for some time on a comprehensive update to the 1998 report. In January of this year, the OECD released its preliminary findings and ditched the bureaucratic language in order to express just how bad this five percent figure was.
"The overall degree to which products are being counterfeited and pirated is unknown and unknowable," said the preliminary report. "This found its way into the 1998 OECD report and ever since we've been, unfortunately, faced with this so-called 'OECD figure.
Its nice to see their blatant and openly corrupt practices are still out there for folks to catch glimpse of, if the MPAA/RIAA and lackies had brains we could all be in trouble
