Donny's Blog
Fight for your opinions, but do not believe that they contain the whole truth, or the only truth. - Charles A. Dana



My First Fanmail - e-mail From A Concerned Economist

Posted: Friday, 5:55 PM (May 19, 2006)

     Ah, my first fanmail - In response to my post, One Month of Torrents is Worth More Than The GDP of France - RIAA Rant, Tim emailed me his concern about the cost of piracy. He correctly pointed out that if this trend of 11 trillion dollars of loss each month continues, we could be facing the collapse of the entire world's economy as we know it!

From: Tim Warnock
To: Donny
Subject: Re: your blog entry

I just saw your blog, I don't know if this is the right email address (from whois).

I know nothing of these "pirates" you speak of, but I do know plenty about economics.

You must understand, the situation is even worse than your numbers report. Remember, GDP is based on an entire year not on the month. If one month of piracy is costing over 11 trillion (which is just shy of the US economy), and this trend continues unchecked, then the total cost of piracy for the year will exceed 132 trillion!!!

Nevermind the French, that's three times the GDP of all countries combined!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)

The cost for piracy is greater than all of the money on earth. We will be forced to invent new renewable sources of wealth so that we can keep up with these "pirates" you and the RIAA have told us about. By these calculations we only have a few months before total economic collapse where we all starve to death! Thank God the RIAA has stood up to these "pirates" and warned us before it's too late.

This is a very dire situation, please, please, update your numbers on your site so that people may understand the severity of this problem.

--
Cheers,
Timothy J Warnock
http://www.timwarnock.com


     Thank you for your email. You are absolutely correct, GDP is based on a year and not just one month. I mentioned in my post that the cost of one month of piracy was greater than the 2005 GDP of France, but I didn't place more emphasis on the fact that it was a yearly figure compared to a monthly figure for one reason: I didn't want to cause mass panic.

     You have quite correctly pointed out that if this trend continues, the losses due to piracy would exceed the GDP of the world. I know a little about economics myself, and I will tell you what this would mean:
the world would be in debt with itself! Yes, you read that right. I don't want to cause a panic, but unless something is done about music piracy, the entire world economy will collapse. As I said, I didn't want to reveal this information because it could cause mass panic, but I could not live with myself if I knew that I could have helped prevent the world from going bankrupt.

     Now, you may be thinking, "If piracy is causing these massive losses to the music industry, won't it just be the music industry that collapses and not the whole world?" No! The world economy would collapse, and here's why:

     As the RIAA states on their website, "Consumers also lose because the shortcut savings enjoyed by pirates drive up the costs of legitimate product for everyone." (http://www.riaa.com/issues/piracy/default.asp). As the RIAA says, the losses the music industry faces due to piracy are passed on to the consumers. Thus, the trillions of dollars of losses due to piracy which would bankrupt the record companies are passed on to the consumer, bankrupting the consumers!

     We cannot let this happen!. If piracy continues and the world goes bankrupt, life as we know it would be over. I am asking you with the utmost urgency to stop downloading BitTorrent clients such as the Official BitTorrent Client, Azeureus, and uTorrent, and whatever you do, do not go to tracker sites such as ThePirateBay, MiniNova, or TorrentReactor and download copyrighted content. If you do, you will be contributing to the downfall of the human race!