Tainted cartel 'pirate' stats

Found on P2PNet on Tuesday, 24 October 2006
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The music, movie and software cartels claim so-called 'piracy' is a Number One problem not only for themselves, but for the world as a whole.

The industries have fabricated a multi-headed monster by turning a simple commercial concept - copyright infringement which in truth, affects only them - into a huge, international conspiracy involving millions of their own innocent customers around the world, and genuine criminal counterfeiters.

However, the cartels are also frequently accused of fabricating statistics upon which they base their claims and according to the Havocscope global index of illicit markets, far from being at the top of the pile, movie and music piracy are way, way down the list, ranking 16th and 20th, respectively.

And even those positions are highly questionable given that in both instances, to reach them, Havocscope relies on statistics tainted more than somewhat by the industries concerned.

If we believe that music piracy is one of the biggest threats to mankind, then we should realize another dangerous market with about the same losses for legal competitors: illegal fishing.