How Copyright Industries Con Congress

All of this fuss, and it's only a few hundred million that's at stake?<p>If I had the money I'd get this into easily digestible form and plaster it all over TV so that people could see that a trivial amount of cash was being used to bring in appalling laws.

<i>Of the total $6.1 billion in annual losses LEK estimated to MPAA studios, the amount attributable to online piracy by users in the United States was $446 million—which, by coincidence, is roughly the amount grossed globally by Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel.</i><p>That's the money quote right there.

In his latest remarks to the press, Representative Smith is still citing a $100 billion dollar figure as the cost of piracy to the US economy.<p><a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/13/us-usa-internet-piracy-idUSTRE80C04T20120113" rel="nofollow">http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/13/us-usa-internet-pi...</a><p>*edited spelling error.

This is a good article, and the bit about money saved by pirates being pure economic surplus that is spent and stimulates actual jobs is gold.<p>But it is obvious on its face that the publishers' concerns have virtually nothing to do with jobs (except a particular few of course), and that this is just offered up to Congress to use as talking points when replying to constituents or deflecting questions.

Remember during the build up to the Iraq war (2003) when a dossier used to justify the war was revealed to have copied portions of a <i>graduate student's</i> essay? <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/529" rel="nofollow">http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/529</a><p>Think of how information is gathered for any kind of group/commission report...often through the use of assistants of varying skill in information-processing. It's not surprising that some number copied out of context from an out-of-date op-ed would be repeated ad nauseum.<p>Paper reports aren't easily hyperlinkable to ensure accuracy of their sources.