According to a draft government report by the Australian Institute of Criminology, copyright owners have been seriously over exaggerating its piracy statistics, particularly when it comes to providing statistics about losses caused by piracy and the use of them to help sue copyright infringers.  The copyright owners even fail to explain how they come up with these statistics either.  For example, the global Business Software Association (BSA) claims a $361 million loss of software sales as a result of piracy, which the report mentions is both unverified and unreliable.

It looks like these piracy statistics are basically being used to help get government attention and get more police time to deal with piracy.  However, without the statistics being clearly verified, the draft mentions that the greatest concern is the use of these unproven statistics in the courts of law. 

One thing interesting about the statistics is that even though they appear to have been worked out by the International Federation of Phonographic Industries in London, the same stats are used in other countries including Australia.  It also appears that the copyright owners calculate the losses based that on the assumption that for every pirated good a consumer bought, they would have bought a legitimate good instead had the pirated one not been available.  Basically, the report wants these statistics to be either withdrawn or those involved in supplying the statistics must supply valid and clearly provable information.

Thanks to our readers Andrew Smith, lanky and heystoopid for letting us know about this news, along with the following comments:

lanky added:  News article from the Australian IT News section shows points in the intellectual property crime report that shows some points that get looked over in many discussions about piracy. 

It talks about piracy in what seems to be a more logical discussion then I've seen before from a governing body. Full article is here.

heystoopid added:  Oh well, at least that researcher knows when to call a spade for what it is!

Andrew Smith added:  As reported in Australian IT, the music industry's piracy statistics are labelled "self-serving hyperbole" in a draft government report.

The draft of the Australian Institute of Criminology's intellectual property crime report shows that copyright owners "failed to explain" how they reached financial loss statistics used in lobbying activities and court cases.