Strictly as copy editor stuff , did you borrow "MSDNC" or is that your original ? Terrific parody of MSNBC, wherever it comes from. Billy -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4/4/2012 9:51:16 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, [email protected] writes:
You're shocked by the lack of fact vetting by the MSM?? Hell, I COUNT ON IT. Like NBC altering Zimmerman 911 phone call tapes. They tend to manufacture "facts," also known as making shit up. What's the credibility of an NBC reporter these days?? It's as underwater as parts of the housing market. Welcome to MSDNC. David _ "Free speech is meant to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech, by definition, needs no protection."—Neal Boortz On 4/4/2012 1:03 PM, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar wrote: Hi Billy, On Apr 3, 2012, at 7:49 PM, [email protected]_ (mailto:[email protected]) wrote: In any case the Reuters story, and others like it, is where I get my narrative from. I can easily grant some of your criticisms. However, I also feel that Reuters, etc, is / are basically right. I have no idea what your sources are. Newspapers like the Washington Post, who actually investigate the issue rather than merely repeating Hollywood soundbites: _http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/how-much-does-online-pi racy-really-cost-the-economy/2012/01/05/gIQAXknNdP_blog.html_ (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/how-much-does-online-piracy-really-co st-the-economy/2012/01/05/gIQAXknNdP_blog.html) For example, the Motion Picture Association of America estimates that piracy costs the U.S. movie industry some $20.5 billion per year. But Julian Sanchez scrutinizes these figures and finds they don’t hold up. After you remove all the double-counting and restrict the focus solely to American users — which is the only thing SOPA addresses, anyway — then, he notes, those industry-estimated losses come to just $446 million per year (“roughly the amount grossed globally by Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel”). And even those numbers might not be right. The Government Accountability Office has raised further questions and concerns about the copyright industry’ s claims of losses here. Part of the difficulty here is that it’s not always easy to tally up the true costs of piracy. For instance, if a person illegally downloads a movie or song that he never would’ve downloaded otherwise, then it’s not clear what the losses actually amount to (the benefits, by contrast, are fairly clear). Is it a problem? Yes. Is it on the scale Hollywood likes to complain about? Almost certainly not. Shockingly, mainline journalists have once again failed to actually vet the facts they repeat with such confidence... -- Ernie P. More analysis: _http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d10423.pdf_ (http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d10423.pdf) _http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/how-copyright-industries-con-congress/_ (http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/how-copyright-industries-con-congress/) _http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/10/dodgy-digits-behind-the-war -on-piracy.ars_ (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/10/dodgy-digits-behind-the-war-on-piracy.ars) If you pay any attention to the endless debates over intellectual property policy in the United States, you'll hear two numbers invoked over and over again, like the stuttering chorus of some Philip Glass opera: 750,000 and $200 to $250 billion. The first is the number of U.S. jobs supposedly lost to intellectual property theft; the second is the annual dollar cost of IP infringement to the U.S. economy. These statistics are brandished like a talisman each time Congress is asked to step up enforcement to protect the ever-beleaguered U.S. content industry. And both, as far as an extended investigation by Ars Technica has been able to determine, are utterly bogus. -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: _http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism_ (http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism) Radical Centrism website and blog: _http://RadicalCentrism.org_ (http://radicalcentrism.org/) -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
