US government using made up piracy figures says GAO report
Last year in the US the PRO-IP bill was signed into law. It created a new head of copyright enforcement in the Justice Department and called for public input on ways to address intellectual property infringement.
It also mandated that the GAO (Government Accountability Office) identify and quantify the presumed harm to the US economy from IP infringement. In a report issued on Monday they were critical of both government agencies and industry groups for promoting facts and figures.
On the government side they looked at three figures which have been widely used to argue in favor of increased IP enforcement. According to the GAO, none of the numbers stand up to scrutiny because they, "cannot be substantiated or traced back to an underlying data source or methodology."
These include a FBI estimate that US businesses lose $200 to $250 billion annually due to counterfeiting. These figures were originally found in a FBI press release, but the agency, "has no record of source data or methodology for generating the estimate."
Other reports from US Customs and Border Protection and the Federal Trade Commission were similarly criticized for being short on facts, and even discredited by the agencies themselves.
Melissa Ferrington and Cheryl Schmidt of California have sued the Internet security company McAfee this week, claiming that subscribers were "duped" into purchasing third-party services. They also claim credit card information was passed on to other firms without consent.
