« Albert Mangelsdorff, 1928-2005 | Main | Doyle lights the lamp at the Senior Open »
July 28, 2005
Beware of "enormous cost" figures
One of my favorite columns is WSJ.com's "The Numbers Guy," by Carl Bialik. He's always debunking dubious statistical claims that make the rounds in the news media.
This week, Bialik debunks the idea that "Workers who used the Internet for non-work-related tasks cost their employers a whopping $178 billion last year in lost productivity, according to a new study sponsored by Websense Inc., a company that sells software to monitor employee Internet use."
Bialik says that this "statistic" is most likely a great exaggeration, because (a) the "study" was sponsored by a company that has a vested interest in getting companies to monitor their employees; (b) the number was based on a survey of managers, and is based on how much time they thought their employees spent Web-surfing; and that (c) even if true, it assumes that all of that time would otherwise be spent with machine-like productivity.
I'd like to see a similar debunking of the inflated figures for the "costs" of software piracy and music downloading (even though readers of my column know very well that I take a dim view of both practices, especially the latter).
The software industry has long argued that piracy costs them hundreds of billions of dollars a year. But this assumption is always based on the raw amount of illegally copied software present on people's computers, and it assumes that all of that software would otherwise have been purchased legally. I say that's nonsense -- most people who have illegal copies of, say, Microsoft Office, would not have paid for it if they didn't have access to an illegal copy -- they'd have made do with something else, like shareware.
As far as music copying goes, it's the same deal -- when the industry claims huge losses from illegal copying, they're assuming that everyone who makes a copy would otherwise have gone out and bought the record. This is patently false.
It goes without saying that employees should be productive, people shouldn't pirate software, and music listeners should go out and buy records. But no useful purpose is served by trumpeting inflated statistics about the "abuses" of technology.
Posted by Urbie at July 28, 2005 07:27 AM
Comments
There's an interesting blurb in TechDirt about a related issue when Amazon started offering used books along with the new. No one will buy new! Guess what? Actual numbers say different http://techdirt.com/articles/20050728/0216218_F.shtml
Posted by: Meg at July 28, 2005 08:18 AM