[CivicAccess-discuss] maybe OT - values of CivicAccess

[Russell McOrmond]

On Tue, 18 Nov 2008, Hugh McGuire wrote:

> one example from the David Simon talk was: Baltimore's police chief
> promised a decrease in crime. And succeeded in dropping all crime by
> 40%, except murders. How did the police force achieve such success? By
> changing how crimes were classified...so armed robberies became
> robberies, robberies became larcenies... etc. So it was a data-shell
> game, but murders did not go down because you can't hide the bodies.
> In fact, nothing changed except how the stats were recorded.


   I was thinking of something similar when Michael Lenczner asked the 
question.  The area of policy I am most pushed into over the last 7 years 
is copyright.  The statistics are largely unknowable, given we have 
allowed copyright to encroach more and more into activities which are 
private in nature.  This means that all the statistics around copyright 
infringement are based on indirect measurements, and ideological 
assumptions.  Trying to do data-driven copyright policy is simply going to 
be a failure, given the information we have is fundamentally flawed and 
requirements to make accounting of private activities more exposed is 
itself a harmful policy.

> So if you open things up, you are likely to have more statistical
> damned liars, AND more rigorous checking, and the hope is that the
> checking balances out, and overshadows the liars.

   In many cases the methodologies and assumptions are more important than 
the numbers that come out.  Unfortunately most people don't look at these: 
the yearly BSA "piracy" survey states it is dependent on IDC's estimate of 
Free/Libre and Open Source Software usage -- and that study indicates it 
is based on shipments of computers with bundled software.  Anyone who 
looks at these methodologies will know they massively under-estimate FLOSS 
(not often pre-installed, any more than infringing software is 
pre-installed) and thus massively over-estimate so-called "software 
piracy".

   This methodology is disclosed, and yet decisions are still made on this 
flawed information.


-- 
  Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>
  Please help us tell the Canadian Parliament to protect our property
  rights as owners of Information Technology. Sign the petition!
  http://digital-copyright.ca/petition/ict/     http://KillBillC61.ca

  "The government, lobbied by legacy copyright holders and hardware
   manufacturers, can pry control over my camcorder, computer,
   home theatre, or portable media player from my cold dead hands!"