The best report ever on media piracy

I’m way late to the massive and wonderful report on Media Piracy in Emerging Economies by Joe Karaganis and a big team of international researchers. I blame the fact that Karaganis sent me the report a week before it was formally released, on the sensible grounds that it might take a bit of time for me to digest its 440 pages of detailed new information on one of the defining issues of the information age. Of course, like any good procrastinator, I did no such thing. But I’ve read a good chunk of the report at this point, and I highly advise you do likewise — or else sit back with Karaganis’s presentation of its main points.

For starters, Mike Masnick is absolutely right that the report debunks the entire foundation of US foreign IP policy. That policy has essentially been written by the owners of US intellectual property, who jealously protect it and think that the best thing they can possibly do is be as aggressive as possible towards any sign of international IP piracy. As the report shows, this makes a tiny amount of profit-maximizing sense for the companies concerned. But it actually encourages, rather than reduces, piracy in the aggregate.

Se posso dire, merita scaricare l’intero studio: a 5 euro son soldi ben spesi.

C.

 

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Da: nexa-bounces@server-nexa.polito.it [mailto:nexa-bounces@server-nexa.polito.it] Per conto di J.C. DE MARTIN
Inviato: martedì 5 aprile 2011 9.43
A: nexa@server-nexa.polito.it
Oggetto: [*****SPAM*****] [nexa] Moody: "Finally Calling Time on Piracy FUD"

 

Lettura vivamente consigliata.

juan carlos

Finally Calling Time on Piracy FUD

Published 14:34, 21 March 11

Glyn Moody

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