[Infowarrior] - A piracy defense walks the plank at the Post

[Richard Forno]

A piracy defense walks the plank at the Post

A blogger gets schooled by the meanies of Big Copyright

By Ryan Chittum

There are many problems with Timothy B. Lee’s Washington Post blog post on Hollywood’s supposed culpability for the theft of its own movies, beginning with the morally unserious jujitsu deployed in arguing that Hollywood is culpable for the theft of its own movies.

The Mercatus- and Cato-connected editor of the Washington Post tech blog that aims “to be indispensable to telecom lobbyists and IT professionals alike, while also being compelling and provocative to the average iPhone-toting commuter” also had a major correction that undermines the entire premise of the piece and reveals its one-sided reporting.

The post initially was published with the Reddit-bait headline “Here’s why Hollywood should blame itself for its piracy problems,” still appears on Wonkblog’s most-popular list as “People pirate movies they can’t get legally,” and now is reduced to “Many of the most-pirated movies aren’t available for legitimate online purchase.”

Lee based his argument on bad data from PiracyData.org, which was co-founded by a couple of researchers at the Koch-funded anti-government think tank the Mercatus Center to document whether “people turn to piracy when the movies they want to watch are not available legally.”

Left unmentioned: That Lee himself contributed a chapter to a Mercatus book with the researchers (at least one of whom is his friend) called “Copyright Unbalanced: From Incentive to Excess.” That would have been worth disclosing in the post. Readers would have had more reason to be skeptical.

< - >

http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/a_piracy_defense_walks_the_pla.php