Freddie identifies “pro-torrenting cliches that need to die.” At the top of his list:
Studies say pirates pay for more content than people who don’t pirate. Those studies are old, small, and of dubious methodology, involving self-reported data. Of course, none of the people who constantly invokes them cares to look at them too closely. They are believed because they tell people what they want to hear. But even if this claim is true, it doesn’t prove what the people who say it think it proves. The question is, do these pirates pay enough to replace the revenues that are lost to the system, as a whole, from piracy? And given the way that the music industry’s revenues have cratered, and the ongoing slowdown in the movie industry, the answer appears to be no.
The Dish 