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MPAA’s Bogus Piracy Statistics are Bogus

Okay, this isn’t exactly news, but worth mentioning nonetheless.

In recent years we’ve debunked dozens of flawed statistics that are spread by the copyright lobby.

In an excellent TED talk comic author Rob Reid looks addresses the very same issue with a healthy doses of humor.

The title of the talk says it all: The $8 billion iPod.

This post is from the News Bits section of TorrentFreak where we present stories from around the web in a concise summary format. Full TorrentFreak articles can be found here. If you have a tip please let us know. News Bits have their very own RSS feed
  • Anonymous

    Feds are secretly monitoring people without warrants (warrantless wiretapping), and if they find something incriminating, they use backdated warrants (i.e. warrants from past dates), but we (the public) cannot prove otherwise.

    This is what they did with MegaUpload. They were secretly monitoring Kim Dotcom (and logging his communications) for years without warrants, and when they had built up sufficient evidence, they launched an official investigation based on illegally obtained warrants. Judges, politicians, feds — all paid by and working for the MAFIAA.

    You think the CIA follows rules? They are free to do anything they desire outside of laws, and the FBI being the “domestic” wing of the CIA, is also doing the same. They’re playing a dangerous game and it’s the American citizens paying the price.

    DIVIDED STATES OF AMERICA

    • http://twitter.com/al_d_25 booda dass

      w-e .. if the Feds are doing all that, then some how i haVE NOT hit the radar YET…

      • http://toscanapotrebbe.tumblr.com Mark A. Duckworth

        It’s not “tinfoil hats”, though. They seriously DO wiretap people and there are thousands of cases where the FBI has misued power. We don’t know what the CIA does to misuse power, because it’s the CIA.

        To dismiss something as “crazy conspiracy” when it’s out in the open like wiretapping and the FBI’s misuse of power is a little naive on your part. Liberty is failing..

      • Anonymous

        Not a tinfoil hat issue. What they did in the MU case was BACKDATED warrants. There are no doubts about this. Please drop the tinfoil hat comment. They do wiretap and your government sucks donkey dick for being paid off controlfreak.

        Take care of your own issues before you start messing in other people’s and the international communities’

        • Anonymous

          Google ECHELON, every government is at it.
          I remember the media went crazy at the idea of China using mobile phone signals to track its citizens movements and prevent organised meetings (hypocrisy, and the right to be above reproach, is a government privilege – right up there with legal murder)

        • http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole

          @Anonymous

          Echelon? That old chestnut? Are we still getting upset about that thing? Hasn’t it been around since the Hoover days?

        • http://twitter.com/erikqj Erik Q.J.

          Not quite since Hoover, but definitely for a long time. If we’re rational about it, though, we’ll realize that this doesn’t make it less alarming, but rather more so.

          First of all, years worth of information is stored about people, ready to be mined when technology and budgets permit, or when the law changes.

          Secondly, technology improves. The mandate that Echelon had in the beginning was designed to limit the abuse of much less powerful technology. Shrouded in mystery as it is, we have little insight into how they use their mandate and technology.

          Thirdly, Echelon is a strong demonstration of the fact that once a form of surveillance has been instituted, it’s virtually impossible to get rid of, and extremely hard to keep a watch on. In fact, as you demonstrated, we gradually get the impression that it’s normal, harmless, a bit antiquated, old news, no longer relevant.

      • http://twitter.com/erikqj Erik Q.J.

        Backdated warrants. Their existence and use is hard fact, and easily confirmed. The implication is this: You don’t know whether you’re on the radar. Even if you’re not on the radar right now, they’re still storing surveillance information on you. If and when they get to analyze it, they may already have enough to sink you. Because of backdated warrants, they can use what they have in court. Essentially, not only do you not know if they’ve got you cold, but even they don’t know. Yet.

        Who knows, next time they upgrade their computer park, they may find some extra CPU cycles for analyzing your data traffic.

        Don’t confuse the fact that it’s scary with it being a whacky conspiracy theory. There are plenty of scary things that have nothing to do with tinfoil hats, and that can’t be dismissed as crazy. Sorry to plunge you into the frightening reality, but hiding under your proverbial bed covers really wouldn’t have helped you in the long run.

  • O’lay Pirate

    Lol, thanks for the post :D

  • Anonymous

    HD version of this video on YouTube: http://youtu.be/GZadCj8O1-0

    *** DIVIDED STATES OF AMERICA ***

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_PFCI5VRUCYT6AVBT3P6ILV3COI Ophelia Millais

    The $150,000/song figure that leads to the “$8 billion iPod” punchline is actually the upper limit on statutory damages for a finding of “willful” infringement in a case where the copyright owner chooses not to seek actual damages, which can be difficult to quantify. The lower limit is $750. I don’t know if it can be proven that the content industry actually bases its piracy “losses” on the $150,000 limit, as Reid implies. $150,000/song is, of course what the music industry wants juries (and people they send settlement offers to) to think such a number is a reasonable award for each infringing work, regardless of how many actual copies of the work were made and how much damage was actually done by anyone, including the defendant. If the plaintiff is not seeking actual damages, and if they’re contending that willful infringement occurred, juries have no choice but to award within the $750 to $150K range; the plaintiff can’t request a lower number (and wouldn’t be advised to even if they could), it’s entirely up to the jury. How fair that range is, in cases where the actual damages couldn’t possibly be anywhere near the upper limit, is debatable, and the defendants in the two cases at trial are trying to make a constitutional issue of it. I wish them well, but I doubt they’ll get very far.

  • Anyone

    if it wasn’t so sad it would be really funny
    but idiots that have no idea eat those numbers up without any thought of their own, they just see the bribes, I mean campaign contributions that come with those numbers.

  • Pingback: Anonymous

  • Uoqod
    • North Korea

      Ahh, North Korea. I love how everyone always love to say how horrid that country is… they always mention the negatives.

      In my eyes North Korea is better than America in the sense that there isn’t much greed – America’s youth go very moody if they don’t get what they want. North Korea’s people are living in the olden days… where people respected and valued their lives. Yes, North Korea might have some negatives… but all of them can be justified by simply saying USA is a hypocrite. Eg; NK Propaganda… USA also uses propaganda against Iran and countries they want to take over ^__^

      • Sarah

        How do you personally know that North Korean’s don’t have greed?
        How would you justify the government starvation of its own people in the 1990s?

      • Sarah

        How do you “justify” the prison camps in which Christians were and/or are held?

        • Guest

          Care to justify the biggest prison population in the world, by size and per capita?

          USA – The Police State

        • http://twitter.com/erikqj Erik Q.J.

          Exactly what relevance does it have that they’re Christians? Is it worse because of that? To think so certainly wouldn’t be a very Christian attitude.

          The relevant point is that people are being imprisoned for their opinions and beliefs. That’s not good, and shouldn’t happen to anyone, regardless of their religion.

          As for unjustifiable incarceration of large parts of the people, the US is certainly up there with the worst of them. Either Americans are incredibly evil and criminal people, or there’s something severely wrong with how the legal and penal systems work.

          Sometimes, I feel very uncertain about what to believe about that.

      • Mi Nonk Fatt

        Good or bad, its the only country capable of screwing and making America curl up like a pussy.

        • Bob

          yeah….but is that a good thing???

        • http://twitter.com/erikqj Erik Q.J.

          Checks and balances. Every power needs it. The US refuses to place checks and balances on itself, carefully avoiding any agreements that will limit its free use of power.

          Is it good that North Korea are the ones able to scare the US? Of course not. It’s a disaster. However, there needs to be counterweights to balance power. For what it’s worth, North Korea does put a dent in US arrogance. It’s a bad thing, and it’s a good thing. Of course, mostly, it’s a scary thing…

      • Borderliner

        > In my eyes North Korea is better than America in the
        > sense that there isn’t much greed [...]
        Sorry, what?!? Hoarding stuff is what *every* society’s wealthier parts do. And have always done. They did it in the Soviet Union, they’re doing it in China, and they do it in North Korea.
        The difference between the common folk in America and North Korea is, that the former have resources (well-paying jobs + stuff for which to blow their paychecks on), while the latter don’t.

        Living in country that was part of Soviet Union I can tell you this – it wasn’t that people weren’t interested in material posessions, rather there usually wasn’t material posessions available, or were available at a price that the average citizen couldn’t afford.

        • Anonymous

          Hoarding of wealth by the wealthiest happens everywhere including western countries. The difference between us and them is we sometimes have enough wealth to live comfortably at the lower rungs. The other difference is that oppression is overt in these countries where its subversive in the West.

      • http://twitter.com/erikqj Erik Q.J.

        North Korea is a horrible place to live. I know communists (journalists for a communist newspaper) who’ve returned from visiting and said as much. Undernourishment and malnourishment is endemic, and continues to cause irreparable harm to generations.

        This *may* change somewhat, with the regime gaining confidence from the nuclear deterrent they’re establishing, and feel able to commit greater resources to the welfare of the population. I’m not holding my breath, though.

    • Anonymous

      If the DPRK wanted to really fuck things up, they need to embrace the Internet. Become THE safe haven for all roque websites that become untouchable by the US and others. Then broaden their reach to become the counterfeit manufacturer of any and all brands. I bet this would stir the ire of the world more than their nuclear program.

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  • http://torrentfreak.com/ Rob8urcakes

    If an iPad holds $8bn worth of ‘pirated’ songs, how many iPads are there Worldwide?

    And if all owners kindly donated their precious and valuable iPad to the US Treasury, we could not only wipe out their $16 Trillion deficit, but eliminate World Poverty almost overnight as well as finance the next few decades of NASA’s space exploration projects.

    Pretty cool huh? I guess we owe a sincere thanks to the music industry’s RIAA huh?
    lol

    • asdf

      For example, let’s say there are 1 million ipads each with 40,000 songs priced at $150,000.

      8 billion x 1,000,000. That comes out as 8×10^15, which makes it more money than has EVER existed in the world. With that, we could wipe each every single countries debt in the world like hundreds of thousands times over.

      • copyright math ?

        55 million iPads and iPad2s over the past two years.

        Apple reported that total number of iPods sold worldwide was 300 million

        • http://twitter.com/icanhazsake Ninja

          Somewhat this rminded me of BigMac index and now I’m laughing over the thought of the world GDP being measured in the iPad index. Priceless.

    • http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole

      I love how there have been more jobs lost in the industry than there have ever been….so if we’ve bankrupted the industry, who’s left to do the complaining? It’s a self resolving issue to my mind.

  • http://www.facebook.com/ValhallaLegend Andrew Lee

    That felt really good to watch.

  • Danny

    That made me chuckle!

  • Anonymous

    I walk to school daily with 106.2 million USD. Calculate how many songs my iPod currently holds.

    • Anon1

      708! Yay I did maffs!

      • Anonymous

        correct.

        How long will it take until Tim Kuik is at my doorstep to beat me up?

        (by the way, I own some of those songs. long live the Humble Bundle)

    • I can’t afford 1 song

      you must live in a mansion.

      R U REALLY Bill Gates in disguise ?

  • Arduous

    How the market is solving this issue right under your nose? Artists are writing crappier music. And real artists are not being heard.

    • Mwhahaha

      Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.

      • http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole

        Letting the days go by? water flowing underground?

  • Mwhahaha

    I think there’s a definite argument to say that the larger ipod/mp3 player sales numbers are are pushed up due to pirated music

    In this Apple, Creative, Sony etc then are not only complicit in music piracy they are de facto encouraging music sharing and piracy to fuel their hardware sales.

    How many more larger capacity Walkmans has Sony sold due to piracy compared to CD sales lost due to it? What is the bottom line on their loss of profit when the hardware sales are taken into account?

    —————————————————————————

    Here’s an idea, a hardware seller, Apple etc, sells you an ipod and bundled into the sale is say 2gb worth of music which you can change whenever you like, free for the first year and with a ‘rental’ cost for any following year

    • MadAsASnake

      Number of “lost” sales = 0. They may have made some more CD sales had new tech not come along, but hey, that is what tech does. Interesting how the MAFIAA doesn’t complain about CD having the same effect on vinyl…

  • Mjau

    I have just one question though. Are these statistics (not the ones the MPAA goes with) accurate? I’m just little bit curious about that. Is there anyone here that could know this in the comment section?

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