One of the striking features of reports purporting to estimate the “damage” caused by piracy - both of software and content - is that without exception, as far as I can tell, their numbers and methodology simply do not withstand close scrutiny.
The trouble is, when it's a question of lone voices like mine or even that of Techdirt's Mike Masnick, probably the most dogged debunker of piracy FUD, the content industries can ignore such posts, presumably in the belief that our quick analyses somehow don't count.
But that's not possible when the same points comes from a
respected organisation like the Social
Science research Council, “an independent, nonprofit
international organization founded in 1923”, especially when
they appear in a meticulously-researched 400-page report:
[...]
Given the scope and rigour of this report, I think it will go
down as a decisive moment when the discourse around piracy
changed fundamentally, with the content industries being forced,
finally, to explain and justify their methodologies, rather than
simply stating their claimed results. And once this level of
rigour is brought to bear on the subject, we will start to see
very different figures being quoted, and maybe even different
policies being put in in place as a result. That's bound to
happen one day, when reality finally catches up with the content
industries: it's just a question of time....
Articolo intero qui:
http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2011/03/finally-calling-time-on-piracy-fud/index.htm