What you say would be correct if your premise were true. The trouble is not the folks in a back alley that sell obvious copies. The trouble is high quality counterfeit CDs and DVDs. Whether you choose to believe it or not, it is an enormous problem. There are billions in sales lost, which translates into thousands of US jobs lost. The counterfeiters are extremely sophisticated, make exact copies, and fool many retailers and thousands of businesses. You shouldn’t assume you know everything and that the worry is about obvious counterfeiters on the streets of NY.

-Gene

Point very well taken. There is so much copying of facts and figures. You are right 100%.

I am not intimately familiar with BSA, although as an industry group they do have an agenda to some extent. I have no knowledge about whether that has tainted any factual or statistical reporting. I would say the slant is probably in interpreting, not facts, but not much surprises me these days.

I also believe copyright protection last extremely long, and public domain is in danger. The duration of a copyright sometimes seems to be 25 years plus the life of Mickey Mouse. Eventually the original character will fall in the public domain, I guess.

While a legitimate argument can be made about the length of copyrights, I think counterfeiting is a far bigger problem than most people suspect. The real trouble is that where counterfeiting is rampant it harms the US, but absolutely kills their own domestic creators. US artists have a worldwide market, with rights strong and respect in many places. Chinese artists, for example, have largely only a Chinese market. Copying is becoming an ever increasing problem for domestic artists in China and India, and when that happens it usually signals the beginning of stronger enforcement. That is the history of the US, and we are starting to see that in China I think. Time will tell.

Thanks for contributing.

-Gene

IP owners would be better off creating more attractive value propositions for their wares than wasting resources on litigation. Our elected officials would do better by rolling back copyright duration to that prevailing 100 years ago, not providing free copyright policing services to wealthy content publishing houses, and protecting and enriching the public domain. It is Public Domain that is in grave danger, not the film or music houses.

I cannot say exactly where the Senator got these numbers, but they are consistent with what I have seen reported by various organizations. I think the Business Software Alliance might have done a report like this, and I believe I have seen some numbers from a US government agency as well, perhaps a Trade report. I think if you search the Internet a little you will find a lot of similar numbers. Copyright infringement and counterfeiting causes huge damage.

-Gene