I've seen a lot of discussion on both this site and others and felt the statement that "all pirates are thieves and must be stopped because they are destroying the content industries" seemed off base. However, a lot of the discussion in favour of piracy seems to be written off as a "a bunch of freetards supporting stealing stuff"

I agree that a content creator should be paid for his or her work, but believe that than can happen within an environment where piracy not only exists but also encourages sales.

Anyway, I have never really found a decent forum where the copyright and copyleft supporters try to meet in the middle. One of the sites I keep an eye on is Mike Masnick's Techdirt. I find it very biased towards the anti-copyright movement and anyone with a different opinion is shouted down in the comments. However, he has just published a document called "The Sky is Rising" and it's really quite good. Despite some case studies that seem like potential one-offs rather than repeatable business models, on the whole, he sits back and lets the numbers do the talking. It's pretty hard for me to find argument with what's written.

The data is laid out in a clear way that shows that the overall quantity of content and the associated revenue is going up. The difference is that the revenue is spread more thinly and is not controlled by a few legacy gatekeepers. Instead many content creators who would have made nothing because they were not selected by those gatekeepers now make something and that leads to the overall increase in the market size.

Anyway, given how some Word Readers make their living from content, I thought it would be an interesting place to discuss the document.

Please, I don't want a pirates are evil/no they aren't slanging match, I just want to see if Masnick has tricked me with a biased report or if it's actually a fair representation of what is really happening today.

So, is there another side to this he conveniently skips or do the numbers stack up?

oops. Nearly forgot to post the link. Have at it and tell me what you think...

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120129/17272817580/sky-is-rising-ente...

It's an interesting read either way.