NY Times: RIAA & MPAA Exaggerate Piracy Impact Stats... But We're Going To Assume They're True Anyway

by Mike Masnick
Techdirt
Feb. 08, 2012

Sometimes you have to wonder if the NY Times is simply trying to hurt its own credibility. That's the only conclusion I can come to after reading the editorial by Eduardo Porter concerning the impact of unauthorized file sharing on the economics of the creative industries. While he admits that the RIAA and MPAA have "tended to exaggerate piracy's economic costs and threat to jobs," he then goes on to more or less repeat their arguments anyway. But the editorial is a classic case of how one misleads with statistics in a variety of ways. First, he shows the declines in recorded music sales and in-home movie sales, as if that's proof that the industry has been harmed by infringement. But, as we just recently showed with our The Sky Is Rising report, people are still spending more on entertainment -- it's just that some of the money has gone elsewhere.

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