Factsheet needed!!

I don't know how to create a fact sheet, so someone else needs to.

This: http://www.broadcastingcable.com/common/jumplink.php?target=http%3A%2F%2Fcreativeamerica.org%2Foscarshost%2FCA_Factsheet_FINAL.pdf

Creative America has this 'fact' sheet (now ain't that a laugh) that they've prepared in anticipation of 'educating' (har har har) the public about 'piracy' at the Oscars this Sunday.

Call it content theft, illegal downloading, illegal streaming, or piracy… it’s still stealing.

No it's not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowling_v._United_States_%281985%29

Since the statutorily defined property rights of a copyright holder have a character distinct from the possessory interest of the owner of simple "goods, wares, [or] merchandise," interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud. The infringer of a copyright does not assume physical control over the copyright nor wholly deprive its owner of its use. Infringement implicates a more complex set of property interests than does run-of-the-mill theft, conversion, or fraud.

95 000 businesses are threatened by content theft.

No, they're threatened by competition, plain and simple. They're threatened by innovation, they're threatened by technology. This is not new for the industry, however.

http://torrentfreak.com/the-copyright-industry-a-century-of-deceit-111127/

Self playing piano, broadcast radio, movies with audio tracks, television, the photocopier, cassette tapes (equal to the Boston Strangler, in a historic faux pas), DJs with loudspeakers, video cassettes, DAT tapes (successfully killed that one), MP3s, PVRs...all of these were a threat to jobs to the industry. Heaven forfend we ever develop as a society.

And yet...?

http://www.ccianet.org/CCIA/files/ccLibraryFiles/Filename/000000000586/TheSkyIsRising7-130.pdf

Through a decade of economic and technological upheaval, the entertainment industry grew 50% while consumers increased spending on entertainment

Doesn't make much sense, now does it?

For the 2.4 million Americans who make and distribute movies and TV for a living, and for tens of thousands of workers whose jobs have been lost in the U.S. due to content theft, this is a matter of basic livelihood. Lost revenue means lost jobs.

See above. 50% growth does not equal lost jobs. Does filesharing affect the wage a boom mike operator makes, or the cost of said boom mikes?

$5.5 billion in lost earnings for U.S. workers

I am getting like a broken record. What lost earnings? The ones fabricated by the MPAA?

As technology advances, so has theft. Today, stolen content is distributed through peer-to-peer and streaming technologies that allow users to download and share copyrighted material across the Internet with millions of other users.

Still not theft. You still have your copy, you can still do whatever you want with it. Downloaders have a duplicate.

In other cases, stolen content is distributed through illegal download sites like “The Pirate Bay” for a user fee

One, The Pirate Bay doesn't charge. That would make it real piracy, turning a profit on such counterfeiting. Two, download sites like The Pirate Bay are not illegal. They display links to material, but contain no material themselves. In Canada, as in many other countries in the world, linking is not a crime.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Supreme-Court-of-Canada-Linking-Is-Not-a-Crime-228825.shtml

"Even though the primary author controls the link itself, the content that's behind the link is in the hands of the one posting the materials."

My favourite part of the story is at the end...

i MPAA, “The Motion Picture & Television Industry Contribution to the U.S. Economy,” April 2010 ii Variety, July 2010 iii American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, accessed 4/29/11 iv Stephen E. Siwek, “The True Cost of Motion Picture Piracy to the U.S. Economy,” Institute for Policy Innovation, September 2006 v Entertainment Merchant Association, accessed, 4/29/11

How incestuous can you get? If I claim that Chris Dodd broke into my house and stole a thousand dollars, and then I pay someone to state that it's true, Chris Dodd stole a thousand dollars from me, and then I draft a study that shows that MPAA CEOs in the 201Xs are renowned for breaking into the houses of people writing blogs about piracy, and then I get an article published in a magazine claiming all of the above, does it make it true? This is all from the same organizations...and courts have been advised to stop quoting, or listening, to the numbers from the entertainment industries, since they are completely without any evidence, any facts to back up their claims, any substance whatsoever...you know, in other words, Hollywood accounting. What a surprise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting