STUDY: P2P Could Cost 1.2m Euro Jobs by 2015

Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy (BASCAP) claims that without any “significant policy changes” EU creative industries could lose as much as €240 billion ($319b USD) by 2015 and some 1.2m job, though figures include direct and indirect socioeconomic effects to manufacturers and retailers of PCs, musical instruments, blank recording material, paper, photocopiers, and photographic and cinematographic instruments.

There’s a new study out by the International Chamber of Commerce’s BASCAP (Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy) initiative which foresees what it calls an “alarming rise in piracy-driven job loss figures” in the European Union’s creative industries over the next five years unless there are “significant policy changes” enacted to address the problem.

Now considering that BASCAP’s main goal is to fight piracy the study will, of course, be skewed towards that end, but nonetheless it’s interesting to see what kind of story it’s willing to concoct in the process.

The study predicts job losses due to piracy will rise to from 185,000 in 2008 to 1.2m by 2015 as lost revenue reaches €240 billion ($319b USD).

“The research shows that the illicit use of the Internet has contributed to massive piracy of Europe’s creative works studied in the report,” said Jeffrey Hardy, ICC BASCAP Coordinator.

How it comes to that conclusion is the funny part. In order to estimate the future effects of digital piracy in Europe, researchers analyzed industry forecasts of broadband penetration and cisco System’s forecasts of Internet traffic. These forecasts were then combined with their own estimates of the current effects of piracy.

In other words, their figures are a hodgepodge of guesswork. It’s estimated current effects of piracy are already misstated let alone what they think will happen five years from now.

“Digital piracy is sweeping through global markets for music, motion pictures and video, television programming, literature and software,” adds Hardy. “In its wake, these creative industries suffer devastating economic losses and an assault on their ability to compensate artists and furnish legitimate employment opportunities. These dire consequences call for an urgent response by policymakers, consumers and the creative industry itself.”

This is where it gets good. The study’s authors decided to include a range of sectors that experience direct and indirect socioeconomic effects that have absolutely nothing to do with piracy.

They include: live concerts, art fairs, exhibitions, architecture, advertising, those involved in wholesale and retail sale of TV sets, radios, CD players, DVD players, electronic games equipment, computers, musical instruments, blank recording material, paper, photocopiers, and photographic and cinematographic instruments.

It’s pretty easy to come up with 1.2m job losses if you start including art fairs and photocopiers don’t you think? To suggest that we need “significant policy changes” (read “three-strikes, content filtering, etc.) to save photocopier salesman and manufacturers is ridiculous.

Stay tuned.

[email protected]