An interesting article examining in detail the blatantly false numbers the copyright industry keeps using to push their agenda; it explains that the "effects of piracy within the United States are mainly redistributions within the economy for other purposes and that they should not be considered as a loss to the overall economy," and that the harm is rather in a loss of "allocative efficiency;" it also reiterates out how SOPA and the money wasted therein will likely have no effect.

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/...t-industries-con-congress

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/...-industries-con-congress/

Saw this linked from arstechnica.

wow.. I actually agree from something published by CATO
:P

Yeah, that was pretty much my thought...

thx Detmer :) for posting correct link

dunno how i got an Edit in there

have the pirates started to sing the song yet? no? guess not enough have been hanged yet.

what does that even *MEAN* Dibs? next time read the article!

reference to the pirates of the Caribbean movie?

fail

Dibs, all you have to do to participate in these discussions is to read the articles...

Thanks for posting these =)

Great article! Thanks!

no. all's i have to do, is to enter text in the box, then click the Submit Message button. though, it does take a bit more effort than copying and pasting a link.

and it was a reference to Pirates of the Caribbean.

ah; well i missed the reference apparently; is it word for word?

He substitutes one set of assumptions for another set of assumptions. Aye carumba. Cherry-picking available stats and unavailable stats to gin up opposition (such as the $46 million effect on taxpayers, oooh, ahhh, except customers claimed to stopping several hundred thousand fake dvds that at store value would about match that...in one year). I tend to like Cato, but I think they did themselves a disservice here and to trash the GAO report without even directly linking to it is a big no-no in the think tank world (here's the link: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d10423.pdf).

With that said, I don't support SOPA because of it's rules about political blogging.

yo ho ho and a bottle of rummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!

trumper: a few thousand (even million) DVD's isn't exactly a huge deal: did you read the other article i posted, where thieves won't even steal them anymore? This has never been about physical media or physical copyright infringement. And who buys "pirated" dvd's or cd's anyway, if you're going to pirate you just get it off the 'net


counterfeiting is a *completely* different issue, and can be addressed differently.

Dibs, you are not participating in the discussion, you are simply participating. There is a big difference and I am sorry you cannot see that.

I'm betting .02 that nobody has attempted to watch the C-SPAN debates on this bill. I haven't seen that much fail since Paul Ryan stated with a straight face that 4% GDP growth per quarter for 32 quarters straight was a realistic assumption. Look it up.

This really shouldn't be a discussion: The only reps "For" this bill are the people who don't type their own email, and are clearly being spoonfed this schlock by corporate donations.

Every single congressional rep who is in the slightest bit familiar with technology is against this. It's a cold day in hell before this passes.

help! help! aponic is hen pecking me!