Lies about piracy and the lying mounties who tell them
According to The Inquirer, Canadian police yesterday admitted to completely making up the story that Canadian software piracy cost the country $30 billion a year. This figure has been widely quoted by anti-piracy groups, and was used to help bring in some tough new legislation earlier this year.
According to The Inquirer, “The RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) did not conduct any independent research on the scope or impact of counterfeiting in Canada, but rather merely searched a couple news stories.
The sources for the outrageous claim came from an unsubstantiated telly news piece, which in turn got the figure from the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition, which happens to be the movie, recording and software industry in drag, and which simply made it up.
It seems that the RCMP just saw the figure which was plucked out of the bottom of the IACC and printed it as its own. Soon they’ll try solving their cases by looking to see who did it on Wikipedia.”
September 20th, 2007 at 3:45 pm
Check out The Independant 19th Sept. Two urban spray can artists caught by the police have both been sent to prison for 15 months & this is their first offence! Judge said they needed to be to be made an example of. There is now an online campaign on “myspace” to get them freed. What justice is this when we let burglars & muggers off with non custodial sentences!
September 25th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Terribly soory but I must interject. I understand you might be upset but that does not give you the right to go making disparaging remarks about the Mounties. They don’t have time to do research! Do you have any idea how busy they are with real pirates? The losses caused by piracy in the maple syrup and moose industries alone are staggering. Over 300 kajillion Canadian Dollars per year. So please understand the incredible pressures our mounties are under here. Thank you very much.