Re: [ARSCLIST] Piracy losses fabricated - Aussie study

[Steven Smolian <smolians@xxxxxxxxx>]

Bravo!  It's a tough job disproving numbers when the basis for compiling 
them is undisclosed.  This should have been challenged long ago.!

Steve Smolian

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Prentice, Will" <Will.Prentice@xxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, November 10, 2006 5:01 AM
Subject: [ARSCLIST] Piracy losses fabricated - Aussie study


An interesting article published on The Register today
(http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/09/my_study_beats_your_study/), as
follows:

"A draft study commissioned by the Australian Attorney General's office
finds that the music and software industries attributes sales losses to
piracy without any evidence to back their claims, The Australian
reports.

According to a draft report by the Australian Institute of Criminology,
the music industry can't explain how it arrives at its statistics for
staggering losses through piracy. The Business Software Association's
claim of $361m per year in lost sales is "unverified and
epistemologically unreliable", the report says.

"Of greatest concern is the potentially unqualified use of these
statistics in courts of law," the authors observe.

According to The Australian, the study is due to be revised after the
institute's senior members disagreed with its conclusions. "We have an
extensive quality control system in the institute, so that drafts are
read by most senior staff," principal criminologist Russell Smith told
the paper.

It will be interesting to compare the final revision with the current
draft to learn if the language is merely softened or if the
aforementioned "quality control system" should involve reaching
conclusions that the report's purchasers would prefer"


Will

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Will Prentice
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