Numbers Cited By SOPA Supporters May Be Fictitious
Ignoring, momentarily, that the U.S. has already adopted international law which seeks to curtail online piracy (see, e.g., DMCA), and that these new bills seek to do little more than enact what amounts to police powers over foreign companies, it looks like the studies cited in support of piracy-gone-rampant may have never have existed. Julian Sanchez, a researcher at the Cato Institute, did his level best at tracking down the research behind the near-absurd numbers (the industry claims nearly $250B lost in revenues a year, and 750,000 lost jobs), but instead found only circular references.
So then, you may be asking yourself: how much does piracy actually cost the entertainment industry? $89MM. What’s the U.S. Taxpayer cost to enact new legislation (SOPA)? $47MM, by Sanchez’s estimates. That's 52.8 cents of U.S. Taxpayer money spent for every dollar in private enterprise saved, if the system works (which it won't), when there already likely exists a private remedy (private action in the host country).
From the GAO:
“First, a number of industry, media, and government publications have cited an FBI estimate that U.S. businesses lose $200-$250 billion to counterfeiting on an annual basis. This estimate was contained in a 2002 FBI press release, but FBI officials told us that it has no record of source data or methodology for generating the estimate and that it cannot be corroborated.
Second, a 2002 CBP press release contained an estimate that U.S. businesses and industries lose $200 billion a year in revenue and 750,000 jobs due to counterfeits of merchandise. However, a CBP official stated that these figures are of uncertain origin, have been discredited, and are no longer used by CBP. A March 2009 CBP internal memo was circulated to inform staff not to use the figures. However, another entity within DHS continues to use them.”
See Kevin Fogerty's piece at IT World for more.
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Sac sighting, Sac sighting!
Pfthwpt!
I can't has freedomz on teh Interwebz? I can't has freedomz at all?
ICYMI Recommended Reading for SOPA/PIPA Strike Day
More government lies!
-John
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcSIZg4wlgo
250B? That's a horseshit number AB INITIO. How the fuck could anyone tell that lie with a straight face?
Hollyweird and these shit peddler confettier cousins just want their goddamned pound of flesh from everyone. Their movies suck. Their music sucks. Their TV shows suck.
If the people pirating this shit didn't pirate it, guess what...THEY WOULDN'T WATCH IT OR LISTEN TO IT. Like me and the UFC. I can get that on a p2p site otherwise, I am not going to pony up the money for the PPV. Fuck that. If I want to hear a song, I go to Youtube. I give a fuck about downloading the thing to my goddamned phone or some bs MP3 player and most other people don't give enough of a fuck to do so either.
The people who should complain about piracy are the radio stations...ipods+piracy killed them. And pop music sucks shit and is totally formulaic. Is there much of ANYTHING in "entertainment" worth a fuck these days?
Bah humbug I say. The amount wouldnt matter if we just reclassify the fuckers as terrorists. Then we can kill them here and abroad...who's gonna pirate our shit now huh mutha flacker....
Just couldnt pull the full swear...sorry.
Check this out: http://kuvo.org/KUVO/streamtest/kuvohi.asx
or, if you have HD radio:
http://www.kuvo.org/highdefinitionstream2/HD2Player.htm
Jazz iz where itz at!
That Jazz station is excellent. Perfect soundtrack while reading ZH.
"I can't has freedomz at all?"
You still have the most important freedom of all. The freedom to do exactly what they tell you.
Now shut the fuck up, dancing with the stars is on.
Why am I getting the feeling that as soon as this latest peice of legislation is shoved up the tax payers ass two things are going to happen:
1. we will be expected to start paying more taxes to fund this peice of shit.
2. Sites like Zerohedge are going to vanish from the WEB.
Get ready, they are taking total control.....
The numbers supporting SOPA are bullshit which seemed self-evident to a lot of us before CATO said so, but the numbers that support the oil pipeline are all valid and we need to support it and get mad about not having another one (in a country that has no shortage of energy supply)? God forbid we would get together as a society and say no to the oiligarchs. But when they want to take away our internet, let's get pissed!!!!!
B-b-b-but... Hollywood Jews wouldn't LIE, would they?!!
Just like the "6 million Jews" fraud that they've shoved down the throat of every elementary school child and every movie-goer in the country; they've been selling the 6 million number since BEFORE World War 1 ! Perfect smoke-screen-of-pity/guilt to protect their international banking crime syndicate and their heritage of Bolshevik/Neocon agitation and mass murder (20 million Russians less than a century ago).
Observe:
http://waronyou.com/forums/index.php?topic=20810.0
Better look now, because they will shut it down once they've promulgated enough Talmudic law to revoke the 1st amendment on the net.
Randians and racists, one single (oily) heart...
>>>but the numbers that support the oil pipeline are all valid and we need to support it and get mad about not having another one (in a country that has no shortage of energy supply)?<<<
...and the pipeline would have contained the dirtyest form of crude transversing US fresh water aquifers and fertile farmland to go to a US port to be shipped abroad and refined elsewhere for the benefit of others...
But, why confuse the morons?...they will choose whatever bullshit numbers they want to "believe" in--reality be damned...
freedom? LOLZ
The US is one of the LEAST FREE NATIONS ON THE PLANET. We think we're free because we can favorably compare ourselves to fucking IRAN or North Korea? ROTFL.
What about like 100 other nations? JFC, you can't go a day in this place without having someone in "authority" trying to be your fucking mom. While our kids play dodge ball with fucking foam balls made for 2 year olds (seriously).
You're breaking about 10 laws right now and you don't (and can't) even know it.
The obvious answer to the tyranny is mass, and I mean M A S S civil disobedience
That's not anarchy.
That's people saying we are the boss, and we always have been.
We make the laws, and those laws are for us, and we can end those Laws and abandon them, altogether, any time we want to.
The same goes for any government, any leader, and any administration.
TPTB just don't want us to realise that we can do that, to any of them, any time we decide to.
We don't even need to challenge TPTB, and we don't need to ask their permission.
We just don't obey anything that we don't think is honouring our personal or community's best interests.
Who the fuck are these 'law makers' to any of us?
To hell with the lot of them.
Why is this so obvious, yet so few have the balls to simply stop playing their game, altogether.
'Copyright' ... who gives a pound of poo-tickets about that?
Maybe they'll copyright the English language next, and thus shut us up, as we won't be able to afford to verbalise any more?
Creativity is for us. It is not for some to have and for us to not have, unless we get poorer so they get richer.
Fuck that, to Hell with them and all their dismal petty 'lorz'.
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted--and you create a nation of law-breakers--and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Rearden, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with. -- Dr. Floyd Ferris
Emphasis, added by me.
You know, there's a part in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion that says basically the same thing.
Give me liberty, or give me death!
PS. I'll fight the death, so you damn well better give me liberty.
>Give me liberty
Holy "that ship has sailed" Batman! Didn't you get the memo?!? They removed your last remaining liberty a few weeks ago... that tingling feeling of where your nationalism should be is just ghost pains of the legs they cut out from under you.
Can you say: "OMG! They stole my cheeze!"?
Ha ha, they don't seem to be too bothered about counterfeiting FSR's. Awesome.
Errrrr, counterfeit and FSR......sorry about the redundancy.
I think the Bernank downvoted you. How did he get an account on here, anyway?
oh, the government lied. now there's a fucking surprise eh?
lulz I came in to post this exact sentiment. +1
Governments don't lie... they just have a different understanding of the truth. It all boils down to what your definition of "is" is.
Advertising is legalized lying.
H. G. Wells
A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.
Aldous Huxley
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.
Edward Bernays
Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.
Joseph Goebbels
All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.
Noam Chomsky
Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.
Adolf Hitler
How about the big pharma ads? Can't advertise smokes but it's okay to advertise pills that you can't have legally unless prescribed by an MD. So, why advertise to the masses with the endless, retarded side effects quoted to appease the lawyers?
What about the comedic value? Do you not value that?
Having trouble falling asleep because your legs are moving?
Then, take this magic pill.
Side effects may include: Stroke, seizure, vomitting, severe abdominal cramping, rectal hemoraging, high blood pressure, blindness and/or paralysis.
Yeah, Doc, I need that extra 15 minutes per night! Damn the risks!
don't forget frontal lobe dislocation.
don't forget the pipeline that us freedom loving americans are supposed to be pissed that Obama blocked (temporarily).
Pharmacetical adverse drug reactions still kill over 100,000 Americans every year... and barely a peep from the media or governement. The WAR ON DRUGS... the wrong drugs.
if there were even TEN MDMA deaths, they would scream from every rooftop they could get access to.
People drop dead in droves from prescriptions and hospital fuckups and nary a peep. Freedom? This isn't fucking freedom.
I saw freedom in Colombia just a couple weeks ago...mountain road, no guardrail. Intersections in the city with no signage in ANY direction. Guess what? Motherfucking PEOPLE managed to get by without the goddamned NANNY STATE mother-in-law government breathing down their fucking necks trying to micromanage every aspect of their lives.
People are gravitating toward RP and will continue to move toward that message because they just want their fucking Uncle Sam to STFU and get out of their grille.
can't argue with any of that. amen.
You know Trav it is funny that RP says freedom brings people together and all your rants in this particular article I could not agree more.
Yeah we somehow survived the last 100,000 years without a mandatory fluoro safety vest.
I guess we musta just got lucky
funny how much Adolf and Bernays agreed upon
The Veil between left/right becomes more thin daily. The pace accelerates. Each of us just needs to give a little to get a lot. We do not need to let this happen. It can still be different. Sure, by the skin of our skinny, chin, chin, but that still counts right?
Let's not go there people.
Write in Ron Paul.
He is not a 'saviour'. He is just an old dude telling the truth as best as he knows how.
GO FOR IT?
WTF else are we to do?
Don't do it.
Stop. Everything literally is at risk. The 'vacation' of Liberty is literally at risk. When you choose sides in this war bear that in mind. It is not us VS them, it is them VS us.
Understanding the distiction is key.
>>>He is not a 'saviour'. He is just an old dude telling the truth as best as he knows how.<<<
Not a savior? His Christian Reconstructionist nutball followers certainly think so...you know the ones who want the all those pesky national civil rights laws out of the way so they can impose the death penalty for gays, adulterers and delinquent children on the state level?
It's clear most Americans don't give a damn about gays or if women have access to safe abortions, but they will draw the line at the death penalty for adultery..kind of hard to get a stiffy and fuck the neighbor's wife when you have to worry about public stoning
That's a direct quote. He speaks their language. He is one of them. Ron Paul's Reconstructionist religious remnant holds the "political truth" together? The Birchers? What crap. I like my government secular and want to keep it that way. For those of you who still don't understand the threat to secular goverment, read on
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/01/02/ron-paul-s-christian-re...
and
It's like Hollywood doesn't understand the level of crap they have spewed out the last few years.
But it's the pirates fault no one goes to see Cars 4, The Lion King remake, <Insert 70's Sitcom> remake, Short Circuit remake, Hangover 2 (basically the same movie, just in Thailand), etc, etc.
It's all part of the plan. Really good government propaganda can't be made in a free market. You have to be reliant on the government and it's enforcement division to crater.
Then you can have forced phones for a 1 a month. Forced cable tv for a dollar a month. Corporate government where corporations tell them what they need to buy. Senators on sleep pills that wake up at 3:30 in the morning and go to work without knowing why they are doing it. Yep McCain fucking did that.
people just don't understand Brave New World. They can't get the message, it seems. We are freaking THERE. "consumption up to the limits of hygiene," the feelies with explosions and helicopters. A true magnum opus.
I started work after the 1st of the year at 2 different locations that have a fucking teevee on all the time. I haven't been a watcher for years, no cable, maybe a total of 4 hours a month with news, a little comedy or a documentary. I CANNOT BELIEVE how crappy it's become. Who is watching this shit? Ice Road Truckers is still on? Can't remember the last time I went to a movie in the theater. Rentals are 98% disappointing, to say the least. I wouldn't take this shit if you GAVE it to me, let alone pirate any of it. (and I have no problem paying for music that I want)
You can't have the music YOU want, unless you also pay for the shit THEY want you to buy.
Maybe I'm having a stupid moment but, I don't understand you. I pay cover charges to see hard-working bands I like. I buy Ween and Splitlip Rayfield and Jimi Hendrix CD's (among others). If it's worth it to me, it's worth it to me. I don't do iTunes, if that's what you're referring to . . . don't own "i" anything.
I'm with you iShit sucks.
Piracy Who? MPAA Celebrates 5th Consecutive Year of Record Profitshttp://www.zeropaid.com/news/92692/piracy-who-mpaa-celebrates-5th-consecutive-year-of-record-profits/
"...nearly one-quarter of all Internet traffic is copyright-infringing..." (Chris Dodd, Motion Picture Association of America, Chairman and CEO) November 4, 2011 (third paragraph from last)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-dodd/secretary-of-state-clinto_b_107...
16% of all broadband traffic last summer was consumed by bit torrent. source: gigaom. So, considering all the other methodologies used to pirate goods, "nearly one quarter" is a reasonable statement.
People are stealing stuff that's cheap because they can.
This is the same Chris Dodd who helped to engineer the current housing/banking depression?
And now he is trying to shut down the internet?
This guy is a real piece of work.
Today, in an article called "Chris Dodd's paid SOPA crusading", Glenn Greenwald skewered that hypocritical lowlife piece of Dodd shit by throwing his own words back at him. Dodd shit smears himself as a professional liar that carries around a copy of the Constitution so he can wipe his ass with it.
How again is this piece of shit a free man?
He has friends in low places.
Gasp! You mean pr0n is infringing?!
Besides the policing of the internet problem with SOPA, I for one had a hard time doing my job today (construction pricing) without Google (Yahoo search sucks.). The negative impact of SOPA will be huge on a lot of businesses, and this is not being taken into consideration by our illustrious dot gov. Piracy losses are a drop in the bucket comparatively.
Why didn't you use Google? It's working and has worked all day. Same with wikipedia - just use your phone in that case.
The main page had the black banner over the search area, and I had heard it was going to be down today. Didn't try further than that. But the point is, if SOPA is enacated, it will cause real problems for all sorts of businesses.
google sucks...use bing. Don't support would-be monopolies of any kind.
Don't buy CIAndroid phones or iShit. Buy something like MS phone 7 and if they get big, buy something else.
It's like when "alternative" music became mainstream. Just move on.
Bing is a subsidiary of MicroSoft, hence part of a monopoly!
Check your premises, and use these instead:
https://startingpage.com/
https://ssl.scroogle.org/
Thanks for that SK, google is just one giant script-engine (as opposed to search-engine) fucking with you, and monitoring you.
I've been looking into alternatives but most are Google Yahoo and Answers dot con affiliates.
I'm going to give my android phone the flick as well.
As far as I'm concerned anything connected with Google and the other digital hangers-on, is not something I plan to use.
Yeah, what chutalking about. Google is only "blacking out" their logo. Why bullshit everyone about that?
'FBI estimate that U.S. businesses lose $200-$250 billion to counterfeiting'
Dudes if amounts are what's important for an act of congress let's start with the FED. Whataya Stupid?
Why would we think these number are more correct than number from the BLS, BIS, NAR?
I couldn't view this page in IE; I had to use Google Chrome. Anyone else have problems?
No problems at all, IE9 fine, Chrome too.
Thanks for checking. Dunno what happened there.
You mean just like when they report a Louis Vuitton bust in china town for 2 million dollar retail value when the real total value is under 800 dollars
Most "fake" brand articles are the real thing.
They are produced in the same factories but - to keep the price high of the "real" article - the remaining 20.000 bags in a production run of 25.000 are dumped as fakes.
This is all besides the point. We don't live in a free society any longer. Prepare yourselves.
What you get from Regular American," I'm not worried if I have nothing to hide."
The future's so bright, you're gonna need some shades...
And the clueless American people are just busy with their Face-my-ass-Book, spreading the same rumors, and are happy.
I just walked my dog. The woman walking by said "Ugh" to me but, "Hello my Precious Darling!" to my dog.
It happens a lot and has made me realize that many people are so emersed in fear and depression that they're unwilling to trust their fellow man. However, an innocent dog? Why of course it opens the doorway to love! It shows that the hope and heart still exists but the wearwithall to survive it is truly daunting.
But corporations shouldn't have to pay taxes, they should just get all the benefits of raping the taxpayers for free and not have to participate in the system.
They ARE the system.
It doesn't make any sense for corporations to pay taxes with the amount of alternative pass through entities out there... aside from the fact that the taxes are ultimately born by the shareholders anyway (on income) and attempted to be passed onto consumers as much as possible.
There are many, many better arguments for curtailing the american corporate form...
this case sounds like the one about the alleged 10,000+ cellular phone studies which the lying asshole ceo of motorola cited in support of his completely bogus assertion that cell phones are not harmful.....a researcher sought to identify the studies but came up with less than 100 which actually studied the matter....complete with incestuous circular referencing....
turns out that cellular microwave radiation is very harmful but don't let the psychopathic cell phone executives hear you say that....
Watch, we'll get a computer monitor tax to supplement hollywood when SOPA does nothing to stop piracy.
"Lost revenue" numbers vis-à-vis piracy are always inflated...or at least made up. They assume that a transaction involving a pirated item has replaced a sale of the same item at full price.
Not too many kids with 20,000 songs in their digital music library would have shelled out $20k for the same if the iTunes store were the only alternative.
So what is ZH's SOPA threat assessment regarding this site's own activities?
So what is ZH's SOPA threat assessment regarding this site's own activities?
'Lost revenues' are always inflated by lobbyists trying to pass legislation that fucks over the entire world for the interests of a few. And when the whole of Congress is deathly afraid of the angry populace and losing control over the country, they would love nothing more than to support this treasonous legislation, and pretend, that they are not supporting it for totalitarian control and suppression of free speech purposes, but for the benefit of Hollywood, the music industry ext. They are all a bunch of pussies, they would probably sell their mothers for the right amount of cash/power/cash, same thing. And while the country continues to wake up, the Kleptocracy must be wondering, just how long, they can keep control, before having no choice, but to declare WWIII.
Thanks for posting this Sac, the allegation of invented numbers from the FBI led to some interesting reading.
http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/oig/fbilab1/fbil1toc.htm
Now where could we find an IT version of Fred Whitehurst?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m_1hglRkPk&feature=related
Although I try to never say anything good about any government agency, the GAO seems to be doing a pretty good job.
Their report on the Fed's "emergency" programs stands as the best government document on the crisis.
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11696.pdf
These guys might be OK.
actually, the studies were done by the same scientists in britain who worked up all the fake global warming studies, and these were certainly just as good, too!
but, they were lost!
in a quirky, "dog-ate-my-homework" type of serendipitous synchronicity, an intern at the D0Justice "accidently deleted" them by mistake while "accidently deleting" investigatory files on the banksters...
Oh damn, so that's what happened to Corzine's arrest warrant! I wondered about that.
"Dog from East Anglia eats critical multi-gig thumb drive". The public would believe it.
Starting to get a little scary. They really are trying to take away our freedoms. And looks like we moved up to another level with a Sacrilege post. Luv it.
SOPA is a distraction from the apostasy that is NDAA.
+1MM.