With the recent Washington Post article quoting outrageous numbers delivered from the Hollywood spin machine, it has
evoked a response from people to people site p2pnet.
"The intellectual property industry and law enforcement officials estimate U.S. companies lose as much as $250 billion per year to Internet pirates, who swap digital copies of 'The DaVinci Code,' Chamillionaire's new album and the latest Grand Theft Auto video game for free."
$250 billion per year is a big number. It is also a fictional one..
"Last year, the total worldwide box office revenues for the movie industry were $23 billion, of which the US generated 40% of that amount. Revenues were slightly down from the previous year, which is understandable since the movie industry had been setting box office records an unprecedented dozen or so years in a row. The record industry last year generated a total of $33.6 billion worldwide, down 2% from the previous year. That's a total of $56.6 billion.
"So how do these industries lose $250 billion per year when combined they only generated $56.6 billion last year?
Even if you take these industries all time annual revenue records, $250 billion per year is almost five times more that they ever earned combined.
"The answer is simple. The $250 billion figure was simply made up. Why deliver such a fictional number? Because the bigger the number, the more incendiary it is. The more incendiary the number the more press it generates. In this case the Washington Post, a heralded paper if there ever was one, printed the number as if it were a fact."
I have to agree with p2pnet's conclusion. The burden is on the entertainment industry now to prove these numbers and where they get them from. The other question that comes to my mind is "What lasw enforcement officials are doing the estimating? Where do they get their data from?
This one smells and the Washington Post should know better. Think we'll a retraction?
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