Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by bigiain 5189 days ago
You accuse this article of "being deceitful", when "the industry" claims $250_BILLION_ per year losses to piracy?

http://www.freakonomics.com/2012/01/12/how-much-do-music-and...

'In 2010, the Government Accountability Office released a report noting that these figures “cannot be substantiated or traced back to an underlying data source or methodology,” which is polite government-speak for “these figures were made up out of thin air.”'

I find it _very_ hard to find any sympathy for the music or film industries having numbers and statistics bent or misused against them. These people have been getting laws enacted based on numbers they've just made up - with _clearly_ no possible basis in fact. So this article has turned the tables. About time, in my opinion.

See also: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110903/00070515801/mpaas-... http://blog.ted.com/2012/03/20/the-numbers-behind-the-copyri...

1 comments

That's and ad hominem fallacy right there. The fact that the industry are making ridiculous numbers out of crappy statistics doesn't mean an argument that does the same thing is a justified argument against them. I think the point of the OP is very valid: the article looks at the wrong numbers, and it does it intentionally.