MPAA: "Sanchez’s main argument is that theft has a negligible economic impact – only some inefficiency – because theft is beneficial"

Sanchez (http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/how-copyright-industries-con-...):

"Does that mean online piracy is harmless? Of course not. But the harm is a dynamic loss in allocative efficiency, which is much harder to quantify. That is, in the cases where a consumer would have been willing to buy an illicitly downloaded movie, album, or software program, we want the market to be accurately signalling demand for the products people value, rather than whatever less-valued use that money gets spent on instead."

MPAA:

"Extending this argument, shoplifting has no economic impact since shoplifters can spend the money they “saved” on other products . . ."

Sanchez:

"In many cases—I’ve seen research suggesting it’s about 80 percent for music—a U.S. consumer would not have otherwise purchased an illicitly downloaded song or movie if piracy were not an option. Here, the result is actually pure consumer surplus: The downloader enjoys the benefit, and the producer loses nothing."

(The problem with the shoplifting analogy: those pinched Mach 3 razor blades are gone, and must be restocked at some cost. And whomever uses the pinched razors, needs razors of some kind, so the theft does diminish revenue. Theft of copyright doesn't force restocking to enable a legit sale, and Sanchez is suggesting that the thief wouldn't have been a legit sale in the first place.)

MPAA: "Sanchez argued against Congressional passage of the Stop Online Piracy Act, basing his reasoning on his own faulty logic that content theft and counterfeiting don’t cause widespread economic pain"

Sanchez:

"I’ve yet to encounter a technically clueful person who believes the Stop Online Piracy Act will actually do anything to meaningfully reduce—let alone “stop”—online piracy, and so I haven’t bothered writing much about the absurd numbers . . . . If the proposed solution just won’t work, after all, why bother quibbling about the magnitude of the problem? But . . . . I’m offended to see bad data invoked so routinely and brazenly, on general principle"

MPAA:

"Ars Technica, a tech blog with a long history of challenging efforts to curb content theft. . . . "

In light of the above, we're content to let the reader consider the source. We do thank the MPAA for correcting their spelling of our name (see screenshot w/ 'Arts Technica'), and suggest their analysis is every bit as good as their proof reading.