Euromedia July August 2013 | Page 5

flannel_flannel 12/07/2013 17:21 Page 1 EUROMEDIA DIGITAL MEDIA INTELLIGENCE PUBLISHER AND EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Nick Snow [email protected] MANAGING EDITOR Colin Mann [email protected] CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Chris Forrester [email protected] PUBLISHING ASSISTANT Nik Roseveare [email protected] ART EDITOR Steve Overbury [email protected] COLUMNISTS Vivek Couto Larry Gerbrandt Steve Gold CONTRIBUTORS Robert Briel - Amsterdam Dieter Brockmeyer - Frankfurt Gail Chiasson - Toronto David del Valle - Madrid Chris Dziadul Sotires Eleftheriou - Paris Philip Hunter Joe O’Halloran Farah Jifri Branislav Pekic - Rome SALES DIRECTOR Sanjeev Bhavnani [email protected] PUBLISHED BY Advanced Television Limited Bondway Commercial Centre 4th Floor, Unit 4.01 71 Bondway London SW8 1SQ Tel: [phone] Fax: [phone] www.advanced-television.com PRINTED BY Headley Brothers Ltd The Invicta Press Queens Road Ashford Kent TN24 8HH, UK Tel: [phone] Fax: [phone] [email protected] © Advanced Television Limited 2013. All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is prohibited. ISSN 1477-8092 nside we have a story about the City of London Police and the Intellectual Property Office setting up a special unit to tackle digital piracy and counterfeiting. The funding is £2.5 million over two years. That’s probably less than the various lobby groups – who all saluted the new unit – have paid for the surveys and reports that justify their existence. Nothing new in that, or even unusual. All industries, indeed all walks of life, have problems that spawn associations, agencies, inquiries, lobby groups, etc., etc., to try and solve them. The trouble is, of course, that if they made too much progress in their War Against … (fill in the crime, social problem, environmental crisis, political gridlock, of your choice), they’d all be out of their jobs. These legions of lobbyists call up the ammunition of statistics provided by their camp followers; the consultancies and research firms who also feed off the fear of…. (again, fill in your crusade of choice).And, of course, they maximise the impact of these numbers. By 'maximise' I mean 'exaggerate'. In the press release bringing us news of the new unit, reference was made to several ‘relevant’ reports. One stands out. It has been around a while but that doesn’t stop it being dusted down at every opportunity. It is the Global Impact report on piracy and counterfeiting by Frontier Economics written for the International Chamber of Commerce Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy. The official government announcement claims to quote the report: “Globally, it is projected that digitally pirated music, films and software will account for losses of around $80 billion – this is expected to rise to $240 billion by 2015.” Let’s leave aside the ridiculous notion of setting up a £1.25 million a year unit to deal with the UK end of this problem and focus on accuracy. To be fair to it, the Frontier report doesn’t say this. It says the current losses (in 2011) – building on OECD estimates in 2008 –are $30-75 billion rising to $80 billion – $240 billion in 2015. Second, the Frontier report doesn’t say these are the losses, it says this is the value of the pirate material out there. As it says itself: “...the value of unlicensed digital files available on line is largely dependent on estimations of volume and will inevitably be greater than business losses, which depend crucially on the assumed substitution rates.” Quite. You may well ask, so what’s the point of this report? You would ask that even if you thought there was any credibility in a forecast that varies from $80 billion – $240 billion of value. And you would be right. Organised pay-TV break-ins or wholesale post-broadcast re-use, are a problem and need highly effective CA and DRM to combat them. But to suggest – and to try and back it up with ‘statistics’ – that the problem can be quantified as the equivalent of a wild guess at the retail value of unauthorised mat \?X[?]\?H\?]Y?X?K?][?[??\??H?YX?[]H?H[?\?H[?[X?X[??\?H??X?[???K[?]\??\?[?\??X?]\?H]?\?]?HH??\?????XZ?[???\?H?X]??[???X?\???]Z\??\?H?H?]?[?YH[]?\?Y?HZ\????H?\?[??\?\?H\??X\?H?\?X\??\??[????[[??ZY??Y??\?\?[??Z\??Y[?\???????Y\??H?[???[H]Y?[??[H?^HB??B???S?S???UT??QQPH B??