Reblogged from Copyright and Technology:
Back in 2010, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a meta-study of the economic effects of intellectual property infringement (including counterfeit goods as well as copyrighted works). The GAO concluded that IP infringement is a problem for the economy, but it's not possible to quantify the extent of the damage -- and may never be. It looked at many existing studies and found bias or methodological problems in every one.
...it will henceforth be very difficult to dislodge Smith and Telang’s conclusion that piracy does economic harm to content creators...
