“Publish first, and check the facts later !” seems to be the name of the game nowadays. But quite often some simple checks can reveal that preposterous claims are flying around without any solid basis.
Ars Technica has done a thorough job in checking the origins of the claims of ”Big Content” that piracy would cost the USA more than USD 250 billion and 750.000 jobs. Quite over the top, if you take into account that according to Ars “$250 billion is more than the combined 2005 gross domestic revenues of the movie, music, software, and video game industries.”
Based on these claims legislation is proposed that would make ISP’s, the police force and courts unpaid fee collectors for this industry. Ars shows that these claims are without any solid basis,and have been constructed from unsubstantiated remarks in reports as far back as 20 years ago.
Quite a demasqué.
