Tainted "Piracy" Statistics

newtley writes, "The music, movie, and software cartels claim 'piracy' is a Number One problem not only for themselves, but for the world as a whole and so successful are their continuing dis- and misinformation propaganda campaigns that they've been able to dragoon entire governments and police forces into acting as industry enforcers. But, says p2pnet, far from being at the top of the pile, movie and music piracy rank 16th and 20th, respectively, on a global index of illicit markets. (Software piracy ranks 7th.) And even those positions are subject to considerable doubt."

Re:Sounds like a great waste of time all around

[Joebert]

13. Trash Smuggling

Somehow I figured raccoons were a bigger nuisance.

Re:Yep: Somewhat Biased

[Lehk228]

overall, they're asmall minority.

actually they are usually large white guys.

Re:Sounds like a great waste of time all around

[zcat_NZ]

Pirated Music ranks about three items below Trash Smuggling?

Funny, I thought they were one and the same thing.

For want of a soundbyte...

[gsn]

Special interest groups make up statistics that support their position... news at 11.

Re:Sounds like a great waste of time all around

[Dunbal]

illegal fishing is a far, far greater problem than music downloads,

      It certainly is, at least for the fish.

Why no official claims then?

[fishbowl]

If the media companies are confident of the value of their losses to piracy, why do they not report these losses to the IRS?

Is it not fraudulent to incur such huge losses and *not* report them?