Government Study Says RIAA & Pals Full Of Crap
A new report requested from the bi-partisan U.S. Government Accountability Office has found that while piracy does have a negative effect on the U.S. economy, the data provided from many industry funded research is not based on sound finance. "Each method (of measuring) has limitations, and
most experts
observed that it is difficult, if not impossible, to quantify the
economy-wide
impacts."
The GAO even found some "potential positive economic effects of counterfeiting and piracy." According to the study, "consumers may use pirated goods to 'sample' music, movies, software, or electronic games before purchasing legitimate copies," potentially leading to "increased sales of legitimate goods."
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Ah, yes … the GAO … the folks whose scoring of Obamacare has already been blown to hell as the truth of what’s in the bill comes out.
Here’s another read on the GAO report.
Counterfeiting and Piracy Undermines the Incentive to Create
http://blog.copyrightalliance.org/2010/04/counterfeiting-and-piracy-undermines-the-incentive-to-create/
By Patrick Ross — That counterfeiting and piracy causes significant harm to creators and creative industries is unquestioned, and the U.S. Government Accountability Office has affirmed that in a new report. The report is a bit thin on substance, but that appears to be intentional…. There are also some questionable comments made to GAO that are repeated in the report, such as the notion that taking a copyright owner’s work without permission or compensation is a benefit to that owner. Still, a reader of the study cannot escape the fact that infringement significantly decreases the incentive copyright gives to creators to produce those works we find of such value.
Leaving politics aside, and leaving the fact that the RIAA *is* full of crap aside, I’m disappointed in the needlessly bitchy and misleading headline here. The report does NOT say the RIAA is full of crap. One thing it does say, in fact, is that “recording companies have lost sales on a wide scale as a result of pirated music distributed over the Internet.”
But now, of course, it’s a Hypebot headline and other people are tweeting it and it may as well be true.
It does not help the good guys to engage in the same misleading tactics as the bad guys do. Just saying.
couldn’t agree more. misleading headline. isn’t it possible to just actually, you know, report on what the GAO said?
Clearly, poster #1 in this thread is confused. This is the GAO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Accountability_Office) we are talking about here, not the CBO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Budget_Office) which scored the health care reform bill. And frankly, I don’t see how it is particularly partisan — it was a bipartisan request for the GAO to do this report.
I am, however, with the others that the report is far more nuanced than the headline suggests.
You guys are right. But I did not od it for Twitter or SEO. I got carried away with the headline because I really really dislike the RIAA and the crap that they peddle to the public. They’re line if that file sharing as an absolute evil and the single handed killer of the recorded music industry. It isn’t that simple… just like my headline perhaps should not have been.
The RIAA and other such organizations are indeed full of it, they tow the company line that gives an easy excuse for years of bad artist signings and poor practices. Piracy has always eroded profits but the poor management decisions have nearly destroyed an industry.
RIAA looks at the potentiality of piracy and does the math, the sad fact is most of the music that can be pirated is never downloaded since they can’t give away most of the crap they have signed.
It would be nice to live in a world where the media didn’t report bullshit just because some “Authority” or other was peddling it, yes. It would be great to live in a world where your track record mattered, and obvious compromises of integrity disqualified you from being taken seriously.
There’s a Tar Baby Effect that seldom gets discussed because 3 decades after McLuhan died, “media ecology” is STILL ahead of it’s time. But here goes:
If you don’t like Lady Gaga, don’t talk about her. Your snarky commentary and whining complaints about Justin Beiber’s media coverage only accelerate his media coverage. Posting blog critiques about RIAA numbers actually re-enforce the RIAA’s perceived importance and authority.
There is no way to engage in this new culture without giving power to what you engage. The only way to kill this beast is to starve it — starve it of our headlines, our hatred, our attention and our time.
If you really think these people are full of it, why are we still talking about them? That’s the Tar Baby Principle at work.
They might record that I downloaded an album for free, but do they combine that with the fact that I paid for the album on vinyl but the record company were too backward to provide me with a digital version of it? This being the only time I download for free…