Why Would Attorney General Eric Holder Cite Debunked Stats About Piracy?
As part of the latest effort by the US to get China to respect US patent, copyright and trademark laws, it’s apparently sent Attorney General Eric Holder to Asia to make speeches that are blatantly ridiculous. You can read the text of the speech that Holder recently gave in Hong Kong, and try not to gag at the claims he makes that are either blatantly misleading or simply outright falsehoods. The Attorney General is supposed to enforce the law — not lie to protect the interests of a few companies. After kicking it off with (yet another) conflation of serious counterfeiting issues (that actually put people’s lives in danger) with file sharing of music, movies and software, he simply parrots the totally debunked BSA’s stats on unauthorized software: The global software industry is a prime example. Indeed. If you look at open source software and how they’ve been able to put together incredible businesses, and enable all sorts of innovation by being the core building blocks of the interne
