Entertainment Industry v TruthEntertainment Industry v Truth

I’m usually skeptical of statistics that are bandied about by the mainstream media.  I’m especially skeptical when those figures come from the entertainment industry.  From their wildly over estimated numbers of sales to the ludicrous notion that everyone who has ever downloaded something would buy it at full r.r.p. if the download were not available.  Even I was surprised though by a recent report that claimed £120 billion in lost sales due to illegal downloading.  The entire GDP for the UK is only 10 times this figure so it was fairly obviously impossible.  Thankfully Ben Goldacre over at the Guardian has done a really good summary of how and why those figures are wrong,even after the report authors corrected the “error”that inflated the figure tenfold –after the press had reported the original set naturally.

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