Report: MPAA's Piracy Figures Only Overstated by $50 Billion

Yikes: "[T]he Motion Picture Association’s claims of $58 billion in actual US economic losses and 373,000 lost jobs came from this press release. These numbers originated at a think tank called the 'Institute for Policy Innovation' – an organization that Businessweek once profiled in an article called 'Op-Eds for Sale.' In it, an IPI analyst freely admitted to taking payoffs from disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff in exchange for writing 'op-ed pieces boosting the lobbyist’s clients.' The IPI’s president supported this behavior, saying it was neither wrong nor unethical, and dismissing those who apply 'a naïve purity standard' to the business of writing op-eds. This doesn’t necessarily mean that MPAA lobbyists paid the IPI to conjure up these numbers. But whatever their genesis, they’re not easy figures to support." [TED Blog via The Dish]