Is Piracy the Worst Form of Theft?

By TChris, Section Crime Policy
Posted on Mon Jun 18, 2007 at 12:04:34 AM EST
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Most creators would probably prefer to have their intellectual property pirated than to be robbed at gunpoint. And then there's this point of view:

NBC/Universal general counsel Rick Cotton suggests that society wastes entirely too much money policing crimes like burglary, fraud, and bank-robbing when it should be doing something about piracy instead.
"Our law enforcement resources are seriously misaligned," Cotton said. "If you add up all the various kinds of property crimes in this country, everything from theft, to fraud, to burglary, bank-robbing, all of it, it costs the country $16 billion a year. But intellectual property crime runs to hundreds of billions [of dollars] a year."

Ken Fisher takes issue with Cotton's odd sense of priorities.

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Is Piracy the Worst Form of Theft? | 4 comments (4 topical)

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From the department of made up statistics (none / 0) (#1)
by roy on Mon Jun 18, 2007 at 12:31:41 AM EST

I haven't dug in to details on this particular number, but these dollar figures are usually derived from a pathetically biased calculation. Every illegal copy counts as the full sale value of the work copied. So when I download a copy of Johhny English -- assuming the Movie Police find out about it -- they add $15 to their scary number. Never mind that I wouldn't have otherwise bought a copy. I'd have rented it (let's say $5), watched it on TV (worth a small, but hard to estimate, amount), or not bothered to watch at all ($0).

So the "official" figure overestimates the financial damage of my act of piracy by somewhere between 200% and infinity%.

I may be overstating things here, too, because I've glossed over (read: not bothered to research) how they figure the retailers' and rental companies' cut. The basic problem remains that every act of piracy is counted as costing maximum dollars, when many actually count little or nothing.

(Disclosure: I have a vested interest in the issue because, as a software developer, my livelihood depends on copyright and other IP laws being enforced)

(Further disclosure: I download pirated stuff anyway)

Go Ars! (none / 0) (#2)
by zAmboni on Mon Jun 18, 2007 at 01:22:34 AM EST

Nothing to add other than I used to write for them a couple of yrs ago :).

like the man said: (none / 0) (#3)
by cpinva on Mon Jun 18, 2007 at 10:11:30 AM EST

there's lies, damn lies, and statistics.

Don't know much about intellectual property, but (none / 0) (#4)
by Sanity Clause on Mon Jun 18, 2007 at 08:32:37 PM EST

I think the entertainment/publishing industry license acquisition pirates are the ones ripping off the artists and creators of today. I remember thinking that it was redundant when MTV started showing music videos interspersed with omnipresent commercials - aren't music videos just free advertising for an artist's albums? And, in turn, aren't those albums an advertising medium for real musicians who actually work for a living? I have a harder time figuring out a fair way to share intellectual property like books, artwork, and even software. After all, how can an individual "own" an idea? But then again, I'd favor a system that rewards the creative folk without unjustly enriching the publishers, distributors and marketers. And, like Roy above, I question the number crunchers who claim that every pirated copy represents a lost sale. In any case, now that Disney's glamorizing Captain Jack Sparrow in the movies, piracy is not just good-natured fun, it's a Robin Hood-esque moral imperative.