Misleading Data Undermines Counterfeiting Claims

An anonymous reader writes "Canada has been the home to a growing debate on counterfeiting with politicians, law enforcement, and copyright lobby groups all pushing for stronger copyright and anti-counterfeiting laws. Writing in the Toronto Star, Michael Geist reports that the claims are based on fatally flawed data. The RCMP, Canada's national police force, has been claiming that counterfeiting costs Canadians $30 billion per year. When pressed on the issue, last week they admitted that the estimate was not based on any original research but rather on 'open source documents found on the Internet.'"

Re:And...

[Kristoph]

If you read the article, they goggled and found some material that some guy made up. Subsequently they found a power point presentation by another guy where a single bullet point on a slide sort-of correlated with what the other guy made up. Two guys can't be wrong, eh?

Sadly, I am not making this up.

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Re:I hope not. Re:Wikipedia?

[enrevanche]

While their number is ridiculous (about $1000 per Canadian), the Canadian economy is over 1 trillion. So their estimate is less than 3%.

$1000 is not really plausible, especially since this includes a large part of the population (small children and the elderly etc.) who do not purchase any or very little media and who do not have the capability to "pirate".

Re:Michael Liberal Geist

[Lazarian]

In Canada when we say "Liberal", we are usually referring to the Liberal Party of Canada. They have been embroiled in some of the worst scandals in recent history here ("Adscam" and our infamous two billion dollar gun registry come to mind).

Elsewhere the word liberal usually refers to people with particular social and idealogical leanings. Here we are referring to a particular group of corrupt dirtbags. :)

I have no idea of Mr. Geist's political affiliations, and it doesn't matter to me. He's done a lot of good things.