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Another contribution from Ben:

The bottomless VAT Vat.

There are several national groups who aid to collectively stamp out what they call 'piracy'. UK has several, US has them, everyone has them. Each has their own thing to say, their own soapbox to rant on (as do I, according to some). What's quite interesting, however, is what happens when you compare what the different groups say.

As some may know, I started off writing some 2 years ago, on piracyisnotacrime.com, and now I write more frequently (and on a slightly wider range of topics) at neuron2neuron. One of the things of note recently, which has been covered at neuron2neuron, was the results of the recent LEX study commissioned by the MPAA. Thanks to that study, something jumped out on browsing piracyisacrime.com - namely the following phrase.

"It's estimated that £108.5 million is lost annually in unpaid VAT alone." - http://www.piracyisacrime.com/bigissue/

Compare that to the MPAA's LEX study that says in the UK, last year, $176 Million was lost in Tax. Hang on - these numbers don't add up. At an average exchange rate of $1.775 to £1 (a round average for 2005) the MPAA's figures end up at £99.1million. thats £9.4million short. Put another way, the MPAA's estimate for total tax lost is 91% of the estimate the Industry Trust for IP Awareness gives for lost VAT alone.

Is this a miscommunication between them? Maybe the groups represent different interests, different groups. Alas no, The 6 members of the MPAA board (http://mpaa.org/AboutUsMembers.asp) are all members of the Industry Trust For IP Awareness (http://www.piracyisacrime.com/links/members.php). For the numbers to match, you'd have to have an exchange rate of £1 = $1.622, and thanks to this handy graph showing the exchange rate for the past year, you can see thats a non-starter. Nor is the page from earlier, since it's copyrighted as 2006.

The question this gives then is this - which figure is more accurate? The big problem is that there is no supporting data given for either assertion, nor any indication as to how it was calculated (although some have suggested the method politely called 'rectal extraction' may have been used). Requests for clarification and explanation of the data was sent to the MPAA last week, and a similar request has now been sent to The industry Trust for IP Awareness, or rather, to the PR company they list as contact. I am not hopeful as to a reply, however, as the last several requests for information or clarification have been ignored.

Unsurprisingly, their site still contains many of the 'facts' that are unverifiable, exaggerated, or heavily spun - incidentally, what is an open bladed kitchen knife, and more importantly, is there a closed-bladed kitchen knife, and if so, what does it look like?

Ben jones