Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Movie fans turn to piracy when the online cupboard is bare...

Ask anyone who's studied copyright policy – scholars of music and literature, economists, sociologists, law professors – and they'll tell you that the No 1 problem with copyright is that it is enacted without recourse to evidence.

Professor Ian Hargreaves, the latest eminent scholar commissioned by government to review Britain's copyright policy, lamented that his advice echoed many of his predecessors', none of which had been heeded.

Policymakers are unabashed about the lack of evidence in copyright policy — the EC's 2011 Single Market for Intellectual Property Rights report declares "The case does not need to be made anymore: IPR in their different forms and shapes are key assets of the EU economy." Of course, "the case does not need to be made" is another way of saying, "the case has not been made".

Writing in the Guardian, Ben Goldacre has examined the most-cited statistics about piracy, job creation and GDP contributions in the so-called creative industries and found them so singularly lacking that he declared: "As far as I'm concerned, everything from this industry is false, until proven otherwise." Full story...

Don't miss:
  1. Twinkle twinkle little rip-off: the dark secrets of the world’s most...
  2. New laws to make copying CDs legal...
  3. Teen fined $2900 for downloading a movie illegally ...
  4. US government finally admits most piracy statistics are bullshit...
  5. Some pirates in Sweden turn file-sharing into a religion!!!
  6. Irish internet provider in legal victory over music downloads...

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