Loses caused by piracy

There are numerous studies concerning loses caused by piracy, for example according to a
report The True Cost of Sound Recording Piracy to the U.S. Economy
by Stephen E. Siwek the U.S. economy loses $12.5 billion in total output annually, it also loses
71,060 jobs, workers lose $2.7 billion in earnings annually, U.S. federal, state and local
governments lose a minimum of $422 million in tax revenues annually. These studies however are
not necessarily true, because the people who conducted them were counting not existing money, but
only hypothetical “loses”, in fact they calculated how much the companies might have earned if
piracy hadn't existed. They assumed that if someone downloaded a song, a company lost the dollars
it was worth, but to make their results look better in the eyes of RIAA and other organizations
responsible for protecting rights of artists. But does the fact that someone downloaded a thousand
songs worth a dollar each mean that if this person could not do it, he/she would buy them all?
Maybe he/she would just buy fifty percent of them, and downloaded a whole thousand only because
it is easier to find a whole discography of a given band than just a few selected songs? In fact it is
more convenient to click just once and have everything one may need plus some unnecessary files
that will soon be deleted without even being listened to. Scientists can check how many times a
given file (which may contain unlimited number of sub-files) was downloaded, but they are unable
do determine the purpose for which someone downloaded it. It is not difficult to show that these
studies are not completely trustworthy.

Moreover they can lead to ridiculous situations with people being sued and facing penalties
as high as $150,000 per song. RIAA has already settled some cases for as little as $3,000 but still it
sounds ridiculous. A 12 year old New York city girl, Brianna LaHara was frightened after she
learned that RIAA sued her for downloading songs using Kazaa music-swapping service. Brianna
was among 261 people sued for copying thousands of songs via popular Internet file-sharing
software — and more of them can be just children. RIAA representatives asked why they sue
children answer: "We don't have any personal information on any of the individuals." Concluding,
they conduct hundreds of lawsuits almost automatically without even thinking about the personal
situations of the pirates (NYPost.com, 2003)

The RIAA has recently had some problems with credibility. It has collected $105 million
dollars from the owners of LimeWire, which is a file sharing service, to compensate the damage it
has supposedly caused, but unfortunately no artist received anything. The recouped money is
destined for reinvestment in new anti-piracy efforts and will not be used to compensate any artists
(Ernesto, 2011).

Recent studies show that in fact pirates are the biggest group of customers for digital media
and buy significantly more than others. They just consume more than any other social group
(Michaels, 2009).