
MPAA lied to Congress about the jobs number - nextparadigms
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/images/sopa_busted.gif
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malandrew
AFAICT, the statistics in this infographic only lists people involved with
theaters and cinemas. I didn't see any categories that addressed people that
perform jobs like actors, lighting and special effects, props, costumes,
writers, directors, etc.

To have an honest discussion on this debate we need to stop talking about raw
job numbers lost in one industry and instead talking about:

(1) net job losses and gains (2) discounted by the number of jobs that are
likely to be eliminated due to changes in consumption patterns and increased
productivity (read: automation) in those industries.

The whole debate about job losses is dishonest if you don't accept the fact
that change happens.

This isn't HN quality material. Give us deep analyses instead of a poorly made
and misleading info graphic.

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chc
That's because the infographic is highlighting the fact that 25% of the much-
touted jobs created by the movie industry are menial positions primarily
staffed by high schoolers that would probably not flat-out disappear even if
the movie industry did. The actual BLS report[1] he's citing does indeed
include all those categories you're talking about, and that's where the
361,900 number comes from. I agree, though — this infographic is not very
enlightening. But Maddox's overall point in the article that the infographic
comes from[2] seems pretty valid: The movie industry is flat-out lying about
the impact it has on employment in order to get the government to take it more
seriously.

[1]: <http://www.bls.gov/oco/cg/cgs038.htm>

[2]: <http://maddox.xmission.com/>

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malandrew
I'm wondering if job losses among high schoolers and teenagers are even a
problem we should be concerned with.

I may be completely off base here, but with the exception of gas money in
suburbs, I imagine that most of the income from jobs performed by people in
high school is discretionary income spent on entertainment (because food and
housing are still provided by someone's parents). Now I know this is not
universally true, especially in low income communities, but I imagine that
loss of discretionary income among this segment of society is adequately
replaced by cheap or free internet content.

I would even suggest that society shouldn't even worry too much about the loss
of discretionary income that is mostly being spent on goods whose price is
falling together with the loss in purchasing power for those goods.

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anamax
Income isn't the only benefit of a job for teenagers. (They also spend it on
eating out.)

Another benefit is that said teenagers learn how to hold a job when failure
may not be as expensive as it will be later.

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JamesLeonis
I would like to tack on money management things that are learned when failure
is not harsh.

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anamax
And, they can learn that they better get a good education so they have an
alternative to low income jobs before they have to live off said low-income
jobs.

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jcromartie
Not to mention the rather dubious claim that puts millions of jobs at risk. If
piracy were going to eliminate any jobs, then they'd already be gone, as
piracy is easily within reach for nearly everybody that would otherwise be
buying movies.

That is to say, if you can afford $30 Blu-ray movies and a player, or going
out for a $50 trip to the theatre, you surely have a high speed internet
connection.

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freejack
The infographic glosses over an important point - many of the production jobs
are contract and as far as I could tell, not included in the job count. I
wouldn't rely on this as an indication that the MPAA lied although I wouldn't
hesitate to say they "exaggerated" for sure. :-)

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anigbrowl
Correct. Even if you go with the 361k figure, that's still a lot of jobs
threatened by failure of existing distribution models, which have caused a lot
of job losses already. To win this argument, the tech infustry needs to offer
a bettter explanation for how content creators can safeguard _legitimate_
(economically efficient) revenue. Internet warriors don't appreciate how
hypocritical it seems to champion full disk encryption and ironclad privacy
while simultaneously demonising DRM or anything similar. It's like saying 'all
data should be locked down at all times unless I want to use it, in ehich case
it should be free.'

~~~
nitrogen
_Internet warriors don't appreciate how hypocritical it seems to champion full
disk encryption and ironclad privacy while simultaneously demonising DRM or
anything similar. It's like saying 'all data should be locked down at all
times unless I want to use it, in ehich case it should be free.'_

It's hardly hypocritical to think that encryption and privacy should be in the
control of the owner of a device, not the device's manufacturer or a third-
party content producer.

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joeybaker
Actually, it's interesting to do the math a different way. Based on Senator
Reid's statement earlier today, Congress believes that

> Counterfeiting and piracy cost the American economy billions of dollars and
> thousands of jobs each year, with the movie industry alone supporting over
> 2.2 million jobs

Doing that math, for every 1000 jobs lost, the MPAA looses 0.045% of it's
workers. So "thousands" could mean as much as what… 5,000 – (2.25%) of their
workforce?

How are we wasting Congress's time!?

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malandrew
This is the reason why we need to reframe this bill to being about rent-
seeking.

The money leaving the industry isn't resulting in many lost jobs. It is
resulting in lost revenue from rent-seeking activities. How much is highly
debatable.

TBH, we need to be addressing the issue of rent-seeking activities in general.
My favorite explanation of rent-seeking that highlights the problem with it is
that rent-seeking is when someone seeks to take a bigger slice of an existing
pie, instead helping make that pie bigger.

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marknutter
Everyone with half a brain know that those jobs numbers are pulled out of thin
air. Only problem is that there are a lot of people out there with less than
half a brain.

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gbhn
Yes. This is called 'protective coloration.' Ten years ago, it would have been
all about national security and about how piracy funnels money to terrorists.
Now "jobs" are the political flavor of the month, so anything you want is
rapidly reworded to be in terms of jobs.

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thebigshane
I'm okay with this instance but I really don't want to see a habit of linking
directly to images. I assume we did this time because this image was an update
to an existing post already on HN (front page yesterday)
[<http://maddox.xmission.com/>]

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stretchwithme
All sorts of things become more efficient over time. Less people are employed
in accomplishing them as technology is deployed.

This is not a bad thing. It is the reason we have the standard of living that
we have.

So waving a jobs number around as a justification for something is somewhat
dubious. What matters is the benefit derived for the cost of doing it.

If something were invented that healed all illness instantaneously, health
care would be over as an industry. But the resources freed up would be spent
on other things, with jobs in those areas increasing.

The same thing happened when we automated farming, manufacturing, basket
weaving. Its how an economy evolves.

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gwern
For more on bogus numbers: [http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/how-copyright-
industries-con-...](http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/how-copyright-industries-
con-congress/)

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snowwrestler
A large portion of the work in the TV and film industries are not wage or
salary jobs, they are contract gigs.

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deepkut
It brings me joy to my heart to see Maddox on here after not having been to
his site in 7 years.

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scrollbar
Could this be the only serious thing ever created by Maddox? His new homepage
header is more like the Maddox I remember though: "I hope SOPA PASSES. Update:
it didn't :("

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jemfinch
Pardon, but do you really think the government is taking the MPAA seriously
because of its _claims_ and not its members wallets and Washington
friendships?

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ruswick
The MPAA lied. Big surprise.

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georgieporgie
Assuming this is correct, there is an obvious issue: is the movie industry
employing a lot of low-skilled people who would be jobless if tech were
favored?

Flagged for being really low quality, anyway.

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astrodust
Those low paying jobs would just shift to what people would be spending their
money on instead.

Most middle to low income earners spend every dime they make. If they're not
spending it on movies or music, it's going to something else like beer,
diapers or travel.

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Zarathust
Imputability? Close to 0

