Piracy job loss report 'scaremongering'
The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) has issued a report which claims that 185,000 jobs were lost due to the effects of piracy in 2008 and that by 2015 1.2 million will have been put out of work.
However, critics such as the Pirate Party UK dismissed the report as 'scaremongering', saying that it propounds "the lie that every download is a lost sale".
The ICC's report, part of its BASCAP (Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy) initiative, claims that "the illicit use of the internet has contributed to massive piracy of Europe's creative works".
"Digital piracy is sweeping through global markets for music, motion pictures and video, television programming, literature and software," said Jeffrey Hardy, ICC BASCAP co-ordinator.
"In its wake, these creative industries suffer devastating economic losses and an assault on their ability to compensate artists and furnish legitimate employment opportunities," Hardy continued.
But the Pirate Party UK said the report contained "dubious facts, inconsistencies and sloppy methodology".
"This is just the latest round in an industry-sponsored campaign of scaremongering that began with the infamous 'home taping is killing music' hyperbole in the Seventies and Eighties," said Andrew Robinson, Pirate Party UK leader.
'Grossly inflated figures'
"Their grossly inflated figures are achieved by including anything even tangentially related to creativity as an 'interdependent industry'. We are expected to believe that piracy damages paper pulp producers, accounting machine manufacturers and railway operators," Robinson continued.
The ICC report calls for urgent legislation to protect the creative industries, something that the UK government is attempting to push through before the election in the form of the contentious Digital Economy Bill.
However, the bill has been subjected to severe criticism from those who object to measures that could see people accused of piracy disconnected from the web and websites adjudged to be hosting high levels of copyright-infringing content taken offline.
It has also recently emerged that the wording for a proposed amendment to the bill tabled by a Liberal Democrat peer was copied virtually verbatim from a paper written by a lobby group for the music industry, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI).
A further leaked email from the BPI implies that the organisation suspects MI5 of being behind attempts to stop the bill passing through Parliament.
Meanwhile, campaign group 38Degrees is attempting to encourage people to email their local MP to ask that the Digital Economy Bill is properly debated in the Commons rather than rushed through in the 'washing up' period before the election.
